Everyone will be vaccinated: Bach
TOKYO • International Olympic Committee (IOC) chief Thomas Bach yesterday expressed confidence that the Tokyo Games will be held successfully next year, with spectators allowed to attend as the world grapples with a sharp rise in coronavirus infections.
While his two-day visit to Tokyo, which concludes today, is likely to bolster Japan’s efforts to stage the Olympics, it will do little to assuage the concerns of a public deeply worried about Covid-19’s spread.
The IOC president spent the day with Tokyo organisers discussing how to stage the massive sporting event during an unprecedented pandemic and ensure safety for a gathering of more than 11,000 international athletes.
The visit is Bach’s first to the Japanese capital since he and former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe decided in March to postpone the Games to next year.
With hygiene in mind, the German elected for fist and elbow bumps over handshakes with both new Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, telling them they could be confident a vaccine would be available by next July.
The IOC will arrange to ensure vaccination of both athletes and visitors before they arrive in Japan, he added.
“In order to protect the Japanese people, and out of respect for the Japanese people, the IOC will undertake great effort so that… the Olympic participants and visitors will arrive here vaccinated if, by then, a vaccine is available,” Bach said.
However, at a news conference later, the 66-year-old stated he would not make vaccination a requirement for the Games’ participants.
News of potentially successful vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna has lifted hopes for the Games to be held, but public opinion in Japan remains mixed.
While Japan has largely avoided the high death tolls recorded in the western hemisphere, the country has topped 1,000 cases for each of the past six days, with records set for the last three days.
Nearly 60 per cent of respondents in a poll by TV Asahi earlier this month said the event should be further postponed or cancelled.
After meeting Ms Koike, Bach approached a handful of protesters who were holding banners and using loudspeakers to press their demand for the Olympics to be axed.
“Do you want to speak or do you want to shout?” he asked, as security guards stood between him and one protester, while the group rebuffed his offer for dialogue.
However, Bach later insisted after the confrontation that next year’s Games will be the “light at the end of the tunnel”, pointing to recent sporting competitions like the gymnastics meet earlier this month as proof events can already take place safely.
He also claimed the IOC was now “very confident” spectators would be able to attend in person, but told reporters it was not realistic to put a figure on the cost of the postponement until next year’s virus precautions are ascertained.
During his visit to Tokyo, Bach also awarded Mr Abe the Olympic Order, the IOC’s highest accolade.
As premier, Mr Abe made himself all but synonymous with Tokyo 2020, even famously appearing as video game character Mario at the closing ceremony of the Rio Games in 2016.
He also played a critical role in Tokyo’s bid to win the Olympics, making the campaign a national priority.
A few years later, a French investigation into doping by Russian athletes revealed evidence of two payments totalling US$2.3 million (S$3.1 million) by the Tokyo bid committee to now-defunct Singaporean firm Black Tidings.
France is investigating if that money was used to win the backing of an influential IOC member, former Dentsu executive Haruyuki Takahashi, for Japan to host the 2020 Games.
Bach said that the payments did not infringe any of the body’s rules, adding the matter was an “internal affair”.
Takahashi now sits on the board of the organising committee of the Games.
REUTERS