- The International Olympic Committee has outlined measures to protect athletes and others from COVID-19 during the Games, but experts say more is needed.
- Some Tokyo doctors are reportedly calling for the Olympic Games to be canceled, and many Japanese have soured on the event.
- Just over 4% of people in Japan have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
With the Tokyo Olympics set to start on July 23, several major Japanese cities are still under a state of emergency due to COVID-19.
The country also has about 40,000 active coronavirus cases, although case numbers have been dropping since mid-May. However, less than 4 percent of Japan’s population is fully vaccinated.
The situation is so tenuous that some Tokyo doctors are reportedly calling for the Games to be canceled, and many Japanese have soured on the event.
Right now, though, all signs point to the Olympics going ahead as scheduled.
In preparation, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) released a series of playbooks detailing how athletes, support staff, and others will be protected from COVID-19 during the games.
But Dr. Annie K. Sparrow, assistant professor of population health science and policy at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, and her colleagues say these measures fall short.
“The IOC’s playbooks are not built on scientifically rigorous risk assessment, and they fail to consider the ways in which [coronavirus] exposure occurs, the factors that contribute to exposure, and which participants may be at highest risk,” they wrote May 25 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Source: healthline