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Coates is Vice President of the IOC. Sell reports advising you on athlete events for advisory fees, none of which included the IOC or related organizations, and volunteering with USA Swimming and the Aquatics Coalition to develop safe approaches to returning to pool activities. Del Rio and Sparrow do not report any relevant financial information.
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This week, the CDC and the US State Department issued a level 4 travel warning warning Americans not to travel to Japan due to “very high levels” of COVID-19.
“Due to the current situation in Japan, even fully vaccinated travelers can be at risk of getting and spreading COVID-19 variants and should avoid all travel to Japan,” said the CDC said.
Tokyo will host the Olympics in a pandemic.
Source: Adobe Stock.
The warning came just 2 months ahead of the scheduled July 23 Summer Olympics start in Tokyo after it was postponed last year over concerns about the pandemic.
The organizers have assured the public that the games are safe.
“It is clearer than ever that these Games will be safe for all participants and the Japanese people,” said the Vice President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). John Coates said recently.
There have been more than 738,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Japan, including more than 12,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins. Three million Japanese citizens are fully vaccinated – only 2.4% of the country’s total population, according to data Our world in data.
In a recent editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine Annie K. Sparrow, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor of Population Health Science and Policy at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, and other experts raised concerns about the upcoming Games and wrote that the IOC’s decision to continue the Olympics was “not based on the best of science.”
“The playbooks claim that athletes participate at their own risk while failing to distinguish the various levels of risk athletes face and fail to recognize the limits of measures such as temperature tests and face-covering,” wrote Sparrow and colleagues. “Likewise, the IOC has not followed lessons from other major sporting events.”
The authors recommended that the WHO set up an emergency committee made up of experts in the fields of occupational safety and health, epidemiology of infectious diseases, building and ventilation technology and athletes’ representatives “to take these factors into account and to develop a risk management approach for the Olympic Games in To advise Tokyo ”.
Tara Kirk Sell
Carlos del Rio
Former American Olympic silver medalist Tara Kirk Sell, PhD, now a A senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said there were concerns that the continuation of the Olympics could spread COVID-19 among athletes and potentially increase transmission in Japan.
“I think many of these effects can be mitigated,” Sell told Healio. “We know a lot more about how the disease spreads, how to prevent it, and how to test it than we did a year ago. We also have some very effective vaccines which roll out. My main concern is that while it is possible to have a safe Olympics, it seems like the desire in Japan to host the Olympics is diminishing and I think that is an important consideration. ”
Member of the editorial board of Infectious Disease News Carlos del Rio, MD, Executive Associate Dean at Emory University School of Medicine said that as long as mitigation strategies are in place, the Olympics are unlikely to be a “super-spread event.”
“I think the Olympics can safely continue with a slowdown,” del Rio told Healio. “Although Japan is
with an increase of about 4,000 cases per day – we have about 30,000 in comparison – Japan is real Stock up on vaccinations. I would make sure that every athlete and every team is vaccinated. “
While it can be safe to host the Games, Sell identified several potential “problem areas” including eating together, transportation, and managing close relationships without unnecessarily excluding individuals.
“It is now clear that Japan will not have vaccinated a large portion of its population by the start of the Olympics in overcrowded situations,” Sell said. “I think it’s pretty reasonable to assume that most athletes and staff can be in a bubble, but there will still be volunteers, bus drivers and other people mingling with the athletes. The Olympic Games are always expensive to organize, so it certainly needs the support of the Japanese people. “
The US Olympic Committee did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.
References:
International Olympic Committee. Tokyo 2020 goes into operational delivery mode. https://olympics.com/ioc/news/tokyo-2020-haben-operational-delivery-mode. Accessed May 26, 2021.
Johns Hopkins. Coronavirus Resource Center: Japan. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/region/japan. Accessed May 26, 2021.
Spatz AK et al. N Engl J Med. 2021; doi: 10.1056 / NEJMp2108567.
U.S. Department of State. International travel information for Japan. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-travel/International-Travel-Country-Information-Pages/Japan.html. Accessed May 26, 2021.
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