Nurses balk at focus on Tokyo Games

Some nurses in Japan are incensed at a request from Tokyo Olympic organizers to have 500 of them dispatched to help out with the games. They say they’re already near the breaking point dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. Olympic officials have said they will need 10,000 medical workers to staff the games, and the request for more nurses comes amid a new spike in the virus. The appeal for more nurses is typical of changes coming almost daily as organizers and the IOC try to pull off the games in the midst of a pandemic. The Olympics are set to open in just under three months. A protest message saying that nurses were opposed to holding the Olympics went viral on Japanese Twitter recently. Deaths attributed to COVID-19 in Japan have just passed 10,000. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga suggested that nurses who have quit their jobs could help with the Olympics, although some resignations are tied to the stressful work dealing with coronavirus patients. “I hear many are taking time off, and so it should be possible,” Suga, above, said last week, in a widely criticized remark.