Tokyo bigwig: Games could be canceled
We are just two days away from the opening ceremonies of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics … hopefully.
With the increase in COVID-19 cases, Toshiro Muto, the head of the organizing committee, could not guarantee the Olympics would go on as they continue to monitor the concerning spread of the virus.
“We can’t predict what will happen with the number of coronavirus cases. So we will continue discussions if there is a spike in cases,” Muto told reporters Tuesday. “We have agreed that based on the coronavirus situation, we will convene five-party talks again. At this point, the coronavirus cases may rise or fall, so we will think about what we should do when the situation arises.”
The virus has not just made its way through the Olympics but has also stretched to the citizens of Japan. On Tuesday, the city of Tokyo reported more than 1,300 cases, which is 550 more than the previous week.
The Olympics have seen numerous sponsors pull out of the event due to the rising number of cases. Toyota said on Monday that it will not air any Olympic-themed TV ads during the event in Japan. The automaker will also not send any representatives to the opening ceremonies. Panasonic, Fujitsu and NEC Group have followed Toyota’s lead and will not send any representatives, either.
Despite all the turmoil in Tokyo, International Olympics Committee president Thomas Bach said he believes canceling the games is “not an option.”
“Over the past 15 months we had to take many decisions on very uncertain grounds. We had doubts every day. We deliberated and discussed. There were sleepless nights,” Bach said. “This also weighed on us, it weighed on me. But in order to arrive at this day today we had to give confidence, had to show a way out of this crisis.”
Canceling the Olympics was never an option, Bach said, because “the IOC never abandons the athletes.”
Staging the games will also secure more than $3 billion in revenue from broadcasters worldwide. It helps fund the Switzerland-based IOC, which shares hundreds of millions of dollars among the 206 national teams and also with governing bodies of Olympic sports.
“The world is faced with great difficulties,” Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga told IOC members in a closed-door meeting at a five-star hotel in Tokyo, adding, “we can bring success to the delivery of the Games.”
He acknowledged Japan’s path through the pandemic toward the Olympics had gone “sometimes backward at times.”
The Olympic committee has taken numerous precautions to keep the event going while limiting the spread of the virus, including severely limiting the number of fans.
However, Kenji Shibuya, the former director of the Institute for Population Health at King’s College London, does not believe that the Olympic “bubble” will work as well as the committee thinks.
“It’s obvious that the bubble system is kind of broken,” Shibuya said. “My biggest concern is, of course, there will be a cluster of infections in the [athletes’] village or some of the accommodation and interaction with local people.”