Olympic boss Thomas Bach has promised the delayed Tokyo Games will prove “historic” despite a first major cluster of coronavirus breaking out around the Olympics.
Seven staff members at a hotel in Hamamatsu, south west of Tokyo, have all tested positive for Covid. It is a hotel where a 31-strong contingent of the Brazil Olympic delegation are staying.
Games officials insisted that Olympic athletes and staff in question were in a secure bubble in their accommodation, had tested negative and were being kept separate from other guests.
In addition, the majority of the South African rugby squad have been put in isolation in Kagoshima after a close contact on their flight was believed to have tested positive for the virus.
Despite the scares just nine days from the opening ceremony in the Japanese capital, Bach said, following a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, he was confident of the Games going ahead safely as planned.
“These will be historic Olympics Games,” he said, “for the way the Japanese people overcame so many challenges in the last couple of years, the great east Japan earthquake and now the coronavirus pandemic.
“These Games will be followed by billions of people around the globe. They will admire what the Japanese people have achieved under these difficult circumstances.
“The Tokyo 2020 organising committee has done a fantastic job in preparing for these Games and to make Tokyo the best-prepared Olympic city ever. The Games will unite the world.”
Tokyo reported a further 1,149 Covid cases on Wednesday – its highest tally for nearly six months. But despite the numbers, Bach insisted that the coronavirus measures around Tokyo 2020 were “in place and they are enforced and they are working”.
Of the 8,000-plus people to have travelled to Japan between July 1 and 13, only three have tested positive on arrival. But there have been 20 cases linked to the Games since the start of the month.
In addition, Bach said that almost 100 per cent of International Olympic Committee members and staff had been vaccinated, 85 per cent of athletes and officials in the Olympic Village were vaccinated and between 70 and 80 per cent of international media had had the vaccine.
Meanwhile, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said the rapid ramping up of covid vaccinations among elderly in the city meant it could hold a “safe and secure” Olympics.
