we started to see a rising number of cases, doubling more rapidly than we thought. and particularly if we started to see cases appearing in the local population that seemed to be linked back into the village or vice versa. reporter: so far, that hasn t happened. but for the head of the world health organization, the olympics is a balance. the fess health of a nation versus the mental health of the world. may the message of hope resound, resound there tokyo around the world in every nation, every village. and every heart. reporter: dr. gupta, cnn, tokyo. and you can follow the games with cnn s instant coverage on our website, just point your browser to cnn.com/olympics. and we re standing by for a decision from the unesco world heritage committee on australia s great barrier reef. the marine wonder has been deteriorating for years due to
otherwise i would have thought maybe it is just some sort of an allergy and i could have spread it around even worse. right now we re around two hours away from the official opening of the olympic games. these are live images coming to us from tokyo. some events already under way. in fact a record that stood for 25 years was broken a little bit earlier, that was in archery. plus two football giants square off on the pitch. don riddell has that and more in a minute in sports. many people thought that it would never happen, but the 2020 summer olympics in tokyo are finally upon us. the competition is already under way, but within the next couple of hours, it will be official. the opening ceremony due to get under way at 7:00 p.m. local time. we ve already witnessed a new olympic record, it happened in the women s archery on friday when south korea s ann san showed a score of 680 in the
forced to drop out. the olympic village has had at least a dozen cases of people testing positive too. we begin our coverage with blake essig joining me live from tokyo. and despite all of those negatives, the show is going to go on. reporter: yeah, after months of uncertainty and a jen population that doesn t want the games to happen, the open ceremony, official start of the 2020 olympic games, is just three hours away. and the foot traffic around the national stadium has been constant, everyone is out here camera in hand taking pictures of the stadium behind me and that is about as close as they will get to be able to be a part of the opening ceremony because no spectators are allowed inside. i monthly have not seen so many people out walking around since the pandemic began. of course that is not great news given the surge in covid-19 cases, but people have told me that they are out here out of curiosity. now, we ve been talking to people throughout the day to gauge their level of
and generally speaking it is health, safety and surge in cases, not the olympics, that dominates the conversation, with some saying that it is hard to get excited about these games. i m even told even though they are happening here in tokyo, it doesn t really feel like it. still the games are already under way and the opening ceremony albeit a subdued affair is set to take place here shortly and when it does, only 950 dignitaries will be inside the 68,000 seat stadium including united states first lady jill biden, she arrived in tokyo yesterday. all that being said, despite the surge in covid-19 cases in tokyo, the pandemic is still raging in many parts of the world, but the caldron will be lit later tonight. all right, blake, appreciate the coverage. blake essig live in tokyo for us. now the white house is adopting a tone of greater urgency over covid-19 after cases in the u.s. jumped more than 50% since last week.
we are live in tokyo where the olympic games are set to get under way. welcome back to cnn newsroom. i m michael holmes. after a year long delay, it is the final precedent to the olympics in japan, we re now just about 2 1/2 hours away from the official start of tokyo 2020. as covid cases surge, the opening ceremony will look vastly different with only select vips and athletes in