How safe are the Tokyo Olympics from COVID-19? | Corona virus pandemic news

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After a year of delay, the Tokyo Olympics finally started.

But there is little excitement in the Japanese capital, where an estimated 85,000 people – including athletes, officials and journalists – are expected to gather for the opening ceremony of the global sporting event on Friday.

With the world still in the grip of the coronavirus pandemic and the Olympic host city in its fourth virus emergency, the largely unvaccinated Japanese public is concerned that the Summer Games could turn into a widespread event and overwhelm the already tense country. health care system.

Adding to these concerns, at least 91 people accredited to the Olympics have tested positive for COVID-19, while daily cases in Tokyo are currently at their highest level in six months. The Japanese capital recorded 979 new infections on Thursday.

Public opposition to the Games has been so fierce that major sponsor Toyota has pulled Olympic-themed ads from Japanese television, while a growing number of politicians and business leaders are ignoring the opening ceremony of the Summer Games. Even Emperor Naruhito is said to be considering omitting the word “celebration” when he officially announces the opening of the sports tournament on Friday.

However, the IOC insists that the Games – where almost all domestic and foreign spectators have been banned – will be “safe and secure”.

The for-profit sports body, which would have lost $3 billion in broadcast rights if the games were entirely canceled, said 85 percent of all athletes arriving in Japan are either immune or immunized and insist its safety measures mean the athletes are “likely most of the population.” censors at this point in time anywhere in the world.”

‘broken’ olympic bubbles

The IOC COVID-19 playbooks state that visitors to the Olympics must have two negative test results in the 96 hours prior to arrival in Japan and have another negative result upon landing. They must also download location-enabled contact tracing apps to their phones and restrict their movements while in the country to specific “bubbles.”

In Tokyo’s Olympic Village, which hosts about 11,000 people, athletes share rooms, but are tested daily for coronavirus and required to wear face masks at all times – except when they are sleeping, eating or competing. Athletes who win gold, silver or bronze will also be required to put their medals around their necks, and those who complete their events must leave the country within two days of their last event.

Christophe Dube, executive director of the International Olympic Committee, called the sports body’s rules on Sunday “strict”, “comprehensive” and “very strict”.

“There is no such thing as zero risk,” he told reporters in Tokyo. “At the same time, the mixing and crossing of the population is incredibly limited, and we can guarantee that transmission between groups is nearly impossible,” he added.

However, concerns are growing in Japan that the IOC’s measures are neither being applied properly nor sufficient.

Soldiers of the Japan Self-Defense Forces stand guard at the Athletes Village for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, in Tokyo, Japan, July 22, 2021. [Naoki Ogura/Reuters]Athletes and people wearing protective face masks arrive at Narita International Airport ahead of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games [Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters]

On Monday, the Mainichi newspaper published a “chaos” at airports receiving Olympics-approved people, “with some athletes approaching travelers in general and fans asking for autographs.”

The Asahi Shimbun also reported last week that many Olympic delegates stopped to take selfies and catch other passengers at airports, adding that hotels in Tokyo were struggling to monitor the movements of those staying with them. The newspaper, citing one of the managers, said hotel workers were “dissatisfied with their supposed roles in maintaining the bubble around Olympic delegations”.

Kenji Shibuya, a leading Japanese health expert, said the IOC’s bubble system “appears to be broken” even before the official start of the Games.

“The IOC playbooks are not perfect, and many visitors and delegates do not follow the guidelines,” said the former director of the Institute of Population Health at King’s College London. He warned that the IOC’s inability to monitor the movements of tens of thousands of visitors – combined with border authorities’ use of antigen tests, which have a “higher probability of false-negative results when compared to PCR tests” – could exacerbate the spread of the variant Delta is highly transmissible in Japan.

“The main problem is the lack of open and transparent scientific discussion about the conditions under which the Olympic Games can be held in a safe and secure manner,” he said. Japan is in the fourth state of emergency, and the number of cases in Tokyo is increasing. As hospitalizations among 40- to 50-year-olds are increasing globally, the delta variant is spreading rapidly and vaccine rollout is limited in many countries, including Japan – this is clearly not the time to hold the Olympics.”

The majority of the Japanese public agrees with that sentiment, while 68 percent of people surveyed by the Asahi Shimbun earlier this week said they don’t think the games can be held safely.

IOC “fail”

Annie Sparrow, associate professor of health sciences and policy at the US-based Icahn School of Medicine in Mount Sinai, said the IOC could have avoided the “disaster now unfolding at the Tokyo Olympics” if it had listened to expert advice.

Sparrow, who reviewed IOC play manuals in a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, said the organization settled on “cheap procedures that don’t work instead of scientifically proven methods that work.” She said what the IOC is recommending is based on an outdated understanding of how COVID-19 spreads – the disease is transmitted only by large droplets that fall to the ground quickly rather than small particles that remain and spread through the air.

The IOC and local organizers should immediately put in place measures to limit aerosol transmission, including placing hospital-wide air filters or “HEPA filters in every hotel room, every venue, every van, every cafeteria and every common space,” she said. .

Athletes wearing protective face masks at Athletes Village [Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters]Demonstrators gather before International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach visits the Hiroshima memorial on July 16, 2021, in Hiroshima, western Japan. The sign in the center reads: “Bach, do not come to Hiroshima!” [Nuga Haruka/Pool via AP]

Athletes should also be housed in individual rooms and given appropriate face masks.

“Face coverings will not protect them,” she said, adding that athletes should use filter face respirators, such as N95 respirators, while in close contact such as transportation vehicles.

“They tested everyone, not just the athletes, everyone in the village,” she said, expressing concern about what she called inadequate protections for Olympic workers. “And vaccinate all the workers, all the volunteers, all the officials.”

What Sparrow also worries about is that the Olympics could become a huge global event. She said the IOC and local organizers should “run genome testing in real time so that athletes do not inadvertently take a diverse home to unvaccinated non-vaccinated populations with altered or marginal healthcare infrastructure”.

There are less than 24 hours left until the Summer Games opening ceremony, but many in Japan say it’s not too late to cancel the event.

“There is no way to hold an event like this safely,” said Satoko Itani, associate professor at Kansai University in Japan.

The IOC had one year to prepare, they failed. So, canceling is the safest way.”

She added, “People’s lives are at stake. As a host nation, it is our utmost responsibility to protect people’s lives. At this point, the best we can do is cancel these Olympics as soon as possible.”

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