IOC President ‘Very Confident’ Tokyo Olympics Will Allow Spectators, Will Not Be Further Delayed For Covid-19

The rescheduled Tokyo Olympics are set to kick off with the Opening Ceremony on July 23, 2021, giving organizers some eight months to assess the safety of doing so as Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, continues to spread.

After a meeting in Tokyo on Monday between International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, organizers do not fear that the recent global spike in Covid-19 cases will further delay or cause the cancelation of the Games (still referred to for marketing and branding purposes as Tokyo 2020).

In fact, for the first time since their postponement, Bach suggested that the Games will plan to allow spectators.

Both “in order to protect” and “out of respect for” the Japanese people, Bach said, the IOC will undertake a “great effort” to vaccinate or encourage to get vaccinated as many Olympic participants and visitors as possible before arriving to the Games.

“This makes us all very confident that we can have spectators in the Olympic stadia next year and that spectators will enjoy a safe environment,” Bach said in his first visit to Japan since the announcement the Games would be postponed was made in March.

In early November, Pfizer
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announced a possible vaccine candidate. On Monday, Moderna also revealed its vaccine has an efficacy of 94.5 percent. Bach also cited advances in rapid testing as part of the IOC’s “toolbox” for staging the Games.

However, Bach and organizers stopped short of citing mass vaccination as a requirement for moving forward with the Games as planned. Though Bach suggested the IOC would work with the National Olympic Committees to cover some vaccination costs, he also said vaccination won’t be a requirement for “participants.” In separate comments, Olympics Minister Seiko Hashimoto said, “It’s not that we can’t go ahead without a vaccine.”

But the Japanese public continues to express concerns about holding the Olympics in Tokyo. In a June poll, more than half of Tokyo residents (51.7 percent) revealed they felt the Games should be further postponed or canceled altogether.

Even among those who wanted to see the Games continue on their revised schedule, 31.1 percent thought it should be without spectators.

After meeting with Tokyo governor Yuriko Koik, Bach encountered a group of protestors calling for the cancelation of the Games.

Japan had been expecting about 600,000 foreign visitors and more than 11,000 athletes to attend the Summer 2020 Games prior to their delay.

Though sporting events around the world have resumed amid the pandemic, it has been to varying degrees of success. The NBA bubble at Walt Disney World
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was by far the most successful, with zero cases of Covid-19 reported as no spectators were allowed and teams and staffs remained ensconced. But that’s not a realistic blueprint for the Olympics. Neither MLB for the NFL have used a bubble, with teams traveling for games and, for the latter, fans allowed at some stadiums, and cases among players have occurred frequently. In soccer’s Premier League, a handful of players and staff have tested positive in recent weeks.

If the IOC and Tokyo organizers do not require participant vaccination, any sort of coordinated plan to keep Olympic athletes from contracting the virus while in Tokyo seems near-impossible, with 28 International Federations and 206 National Olympic Committees over five continents sending participants to Japan. For spectators, there isn’t always the option of a large stadium with spaced-out seating; certain sports only have so much room and so many vantage points for observation.

As of Monday there have been more than 54 million confirmed cases of coronavirus around the world, and Japan logged record new cases three days in a row as of Saturday.

According to Kyodo News and unrelated to his visit with Bach, despite the continued surge in cases, Suga plans to continue Japan’s “Go To Travel” subsidy campaign to support domestic tourism.

The Tokyo 2020 Games are the first that have been postponed to a later date rather than canceled outright.