Tokyo: The IOC concludes its final planning sessions on Friday with the Olympic organizers in Tokyo, just two months before the matches open. The bulk of the focus is on convincing a skeptical public and medical community that the games should continue.
“We have a lot to do over the next three days,” IOC Vice President John Coates said Wednesday as the sessions began. The core problem is that 60 to 80 percent of the people in Japan, depending on how the question is asked in public opinion polls, do not want the postponed Olympic Games to open in the midst of a pandemic, despite the repeated assurances of the organizers that games will be. “Safe and secure.” There is still no indication that the games will be canceled. The International Olympic Committee has repeatedly said they will continue.
But the IOC’s most senior member, Richard Pound, said in an interview with the Japanese JiJi Press that the final deadline to eliminate it expired another month. “Before the end of June, you really need to know, yes or no,” JiJi Pound was quoted as saying. Pound reiterates – as the IOC said – that if the games cannot take place now, they will be canceled, and not postponed again.
Kaori Yamaguchi, a bronze medalist in judo at the 1988 Olympic Games and a member of the Japanese Olympic Committee, hinted in an interview with the Japanese Kyodo news agency this week that the organizers had been placed in the corner. She was skeptical about continuing. “We’re starting to reach a point where we can no longer even cancel,” she said.
Tokyo, Osaka and many other prefectures are in a state of emergency and health care systems are being stretched. Emergency measures are due to end on 31 May, but they are likely to be extended and closer to the opening date of 23 July.
“If the current situation continues, I hope the government has the wisdom not to end the emergency at the end of May,” Haruo Ozaki, head of the Tokyo Medical Association, told the weekly Aera.
Ozaki has consistently said government measures to spread the COVID-19 was insufficient. About 12,000 deaths in Japan are attributed to the virus, and the situation is getting worse because few in Japan have been fully vaccinated.
Ozaki warned that if the emergencies do not spread, the virus and infectious variants will spread quickly.
Source: Telangana Today