Tokyo's Plan to Avoid Pandemic Disaster During the Olympics
will be “safe” from COVID-19. But the reality is there can be no truly “safe” Olympics, only a “safer” one. Experts agree there are no zero-risk scenarios. Yet the actual risk—to athletes, Japanese citizens and the rest of the world—has never been properly calculated or communicated. “As far as I know, there is no risk-assessment report or result,” says Hitoshi Oshitani, the virologist who helped devise Japan’s COVID-19 strategy.
Some public-health experts say the greatest challenge lies in the increasing prevalence of the Delta variant—which Japanese health officials predict could account for half of new infections in the country by mid-July—because it’s considerably more contagious and can potentially cause more severe disease than earlier forms of the virus.
While such testing should pick up most cases of COVID-19 quickly, experience from other large sports events over the past year, including the U.S.’s NBA and NFL and the most recent Euro soccer tournament, shows testing won’t be enough.
Convincing the public and the Japanese medical community of that remains one of the organizers’ biggest challenges. Nakamura says the IOC has tried to avoid putting any extra burden on the Tokyo health care system by not sending Olympic participants to local testing centers or clinics.
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