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Fifty days from Thursday, if IOC president Thomas Bach tunes out the flak, the Olympic cauldron will be lit at Japan National Stadium, belatedly opening Tokyo s pandemic Summer Games.
There s an urgent argument that these rescheduled Olympics shouldn t begin on July 23. Half of the United States and Canada has received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose, but the world is still mired in the health crisis that postponed the 2020 competition for a full year. The virus that s killed more than 3.5 million people globally is infecting 3,000 people per day in Japan, where fewer than 10% of the population has been jabbed.
Tokyo 2020 Olympics organizing committee president Seiko Hashimoto said the group “cannot postpone the games again.” By
Adam Barnes | June 3, 2021 The Olympic rings are lit at the waterfront of Odaiba in Tokyo on April 20, 2021.Getty
Story at a glance
Tokyo 2020 Olympics organizing committee president Seiko Hashimoto has said the event will move forward despite warnings from the medical community that the delayed summer games could pose an imminent public health risk.
The committee president’s resolute posture conflicted with a fresh warning from Shigeru Omi, the head of an expert panel advising the Japanese government on COVID-19 risks at the Olympic games.
The answer is almost certainly “yes.”
Senior International Olympic Committee member Richard Pound was emphatic in an interview with a British newspaper.
“Barring Armageddon that we can’t see or anticipate, these things are a go,” Pound told the Evening Standard.
Tokyo is under a COVID-19 state of emergency, but IOC Vice President John Coates has said the games will open on July 23 – state of emergency, or no state of emergency.
As an exclamation point, Australia’s softball team – the first major group of athletes from abroad to set up an Olympic base in Japan – arrived in Tokyo on Tuesday.
One of Japan's largest newspapers, The Asahi Shimbun, published an editorial on Wednesday, May 26 calling on Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to reconsider holding the Tokyo Olympics, which is set to commence in less than two months despite rising COVID-19 cases and public opposition. “It is simply b