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Covid adviser: Games not safe

– Nine

A Covid-19 adviser to the Japanese government has delivered a scathing assessment of Tokyo 2020’s capacity to withstand a significant outbreak in the Games village, saying Olympics organisers squandered their opportunity to prepare for the worst.

Leading virologist Hitoshi Oshitani, a member of the Suga government’s advisory panel on COVID-19, challenged the Tokyo organising committee’s assurances that the Olympic village was safe and said there were ‘‘many holes in the playbook’’ through which the virus could spread.

‘‘I don’t think the organising committee has been doing their best to minimise the risk,’’ Oshitani said. ‘‘They have just been saying the Olympics are safe without showing any strategy to minimise the risk.

‘‘They have had more than a year after they decided to postpone the Olympics. They knew they were going to hold these Olympics in the middle of a pandemic. But what have they been doing? I don’t think they are prepared for the worst case scenario.’’

Covid cases within the Olympic precinct have already caused havoc, with Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis demanding to know how four of his nation’s athletes and two officials, including an unvaccinated team doctor, became infected on their flight to Tokyo, bringing to 106 the number of people associated with the Olympics to return positive tests.

Babis described the situation as a scandal and the team’s travel arrangements as ‘‘pure amateurism’’.

One of the infected athletes who returned a positive test after arriving inside the athletes’ village, beach volleyball player Marketa Nausch Slukova, expressed her disappointment.

Vaccination politics have also created a rift in the US swim team, with retired US swimmer Maya DiRado accusing 22-yearold team member Michael Andrew of putting his wellbeing above the interests of his teammates by refusing to get a jab.

Dr Jonathan Finoff, the Chief Medical Officer of the US Olympic team, made clear his preference for all athletes to be vaccinated but played down the issue with Andrew, saying Tokyo 2020 protocols treated everyone as unvaccinated.

Finoff described as ‘‘outstanding’’ the Covid mitigation measures adopted by the Tokyo organising committee. These include two PCR tests in the days before departing for Tokyo and daily, screening with rapid antigen tests, and mandatory face masks.

‘‘We’re also supporting our team with 137 medical staff members in the Team USA delegation, 36 of whom are physicians,’’ the sports medicine expert said.

‘‘So when someone asks me ‘should the Games go on?’ I can say emphatically that yes, indeed, they should go on.

‘‘I think the health and safety measures that have been implemented have been exceptional and I’m very confident we can have a safe and successful Games.’’

Oshitani, the head of virology and an infectious disease expert at the Tohoku University School of Medicine, is not convinced.

Oshitani said the high rise athletes’ village which houses 6700 athletes was designed to help athletes mix with one another, not to socially isolate. ‘‘It is not designed for controlling infectious diseases,’’ he said. ‘‘Most people are sharing rooms.

‘‘So there is a risk and we have already seen many cases in the Olympic village. It is also not totally unexpected.’’

Daily confirmed cases in Tokyo have climbed to about

2000 in the week leading up to the Olympics and more than 2500 people are currently hospitalised with Covid-19 disease. The highly infectious Delta strain driving fresh waves of infections in Britain, the US and around the world is predicted to account for all new cases in Japan by next month.

Oshitani believes the greatest public health risk posed by the Games to the people of Japan is not foreign athletes importing the virus but the movement of people between prefectures required by the Games and the contradictory message they send about the need to observe Tokyo’s state of emergency restrictions.

WORLD

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2021-07-25T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-07-25T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/281741272447424

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