Athlete to have their olympic dreams dashed by covid-19 and won t be the last. there are several high profile athletes who have pulled out of the games or are staying away from the games because of testing positive or they re concerned about the restrictions. or because the lack of spectators. not anyone s ideal here. not ideal at all. salena, grateful for the live reporting on the scene. we know you ll keep us updated. let s bring in to share insights, professor of medicine and surgery at george washington university. doctor, i want to show the viewers, you see the increase in covid around the world. the orange and the red are the worst. even in the countries where you see the beige color, that means they re increasing modestly right now. so you have covid on the increase around the world. and you have in japan, an increase in cases, up since july. you were here ten days ago and said they should not hold the
Olympics. it was too dangerous. you heard salena wang. officials look at the numbers and say we ll be on top of this, but they re making the case the numbers are lower than they anticipated. do you think this is being handled right? well, i did think, and i continue to think that these games should not be held. right now the virus is surging in japan. only 21% of the japanese population are fully vaccinated. so the virus is ascendant in japan, and the other issue is they the olympic organizing committee did not mandate vaccines for participants or staff. so there are quite a few attendees who are unprotected. now, there are a lot of reasons why they didn t do that, but i don t think you can hold a game that requires tens of thousands of athletes and staff to come to a country with surging virus and not have every attendee
Runs completely counter to what much of the medical community here is saying. they say there s still a risk that this event could turn into a super spreader event with only 3.5% of the japanese population fully vaccinated. salena wang, thank you very much for your reporting. we ll keep a close eye on it. thanks to all of you for joining us today. i m poppy harlow. i m jim sciutto. at this hour with erica hill starts right after a quick break. little rock and even worcester. and tonight. i ll be eating the chicken quesadilla from.tony s tex mex.in. katy. (doorbell) (giggle) do ya think they bought it? oh yeah.