Holding a safe Olympics might be a while
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told other world leaders last week he wanted the Tokyo Olympics to be proof mankind could “defeat the new coronavirus.”
Hold them too soon, though, and they could reignite the spread of COVID-19.
With International Olympic Committee member Dick Pound telling USA TODAY on Monday a decision has been made to postpone the Summer Games, the question now becomes how soon is it safe for them to happen? Later this year? Or 2021 as Pound suggested? Or possibly 2022?
According to public health experts, the answer might be further out than Tokyo and IOC organizers would like. Projecting the spread of COVID-19 and how well it is contained might be the most challenging factor and one that could put the IOC in a similar predicament in the future.
“If they put it on the calendar, they have to be prepared to perhaps move it a second time because we just don’t know when it will be safe enough to proceed,” said Amir Attaran, an epidemiologist and professor of law and medicine at the University of Ottawa. “Could it be in 12 months? Possibly, but are you going to take a big bet on that? Because that’s what the IOC would be doing. Would it be safe in two years? Almost certainly, but are they going to commit right now to two years?”
Until this past week, the IOC and Tokyo organizers had been steadfast in hosting the Games in July has planned. But they have backed off that stance, and public health experts agreed it’s not a feasible option.
“I think it’s going to really take some imagination to think of ways you might reimagine the Olympics in a way that makes it safe to do,” said Tara Kirk Sell, senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a 2004 Olympic silver medalist in swimming. “We can’t be in an exponential growth portion of this outbreak. We can’t be holding the Games when hospitals are being overrun with cases of people who are dying of this disease.”
That’s certainly the case in Italy, which surpassed China this past week for deaths caused by the virus and which remains in virtual lockdown. That might become the case in other places, like the United States, where a patchwork of restrictions is aimed at slowing the spread of the virus.
Public health experts said proceeding when a vaccine is available would be the best option. The first trial started last week in Seattle, and a vaccine is not expected to be widely available for 12-18 months.
“The danger is in the absence of a vaccine that if you had a big worldwide event like that, that you could reintroduce, reboot, so to speak, chains of transmission, which would then require you to take the very restrictive measures that we’re having to take now to tamp it down,” said Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist at New York University and Bellevue Hospital and host of the podcast “Epidemic.”
“I love the idea of having the celebration once we have the vaccine.”
Attaran said the Olympics could only go ahead when the virus has run its course and a large portion of the global population has developed immunity by contracting the virus. While projections vary, none he has seen show that happening by July, Attaran said.
Hosting the Games when a vaccine is not available would likely require an effective treatment to be available and significant changes to how the Games would be held, experts said.
It would entail extensive and rapid testing and screening, protocols for quarantining and a reconsideration of how to house and feed people differently. All of those are made more difficult by the spread of the virus through asymptomatic people.
Lawrence O. Gostin, a Georgetown professor and director of the WHO Collaborating Center on National & Global Health Law, said three conditions would need to exist to consider going forward: that the number of cases would be “dramatically reduced,” there would be widespread use of a vaccine and treatment and that governments would dismantle travel restrictions.
“All three conditions would have to be met before it was safe to proceed with the Olympics because a global sports event posts huge risks of the spread of infectious disease,” he said.
In a letter to athletes released Sunday, IOC president Thomas Bach wrote, “This uncertainty stems from the fact that, at this moment, nobody can really make fully reliable statements about the duration of this fight against the virus.”
It’s for that reason, Olympic organizers and Abe might find it difficult for the Games to celebrate mankind’s triumph over COVID-19 anytime soon.