Cancelling the Tokyo Olympics “remains an option” if the pandemic spread is not brought under control.
As the Guardian reports, those were the comments of Toshihiro Nikai, general secretary of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic party, in a TV interview that was as of his morning (Saturday 17 April) yet to be aired.
Nikai’s statement is at odds with his government’s insistence that the Games will go ahead in a little over three months’ time, on 23 July.
But public sentiment is not so clear-cut, with nearly two-fifths saying the Games should be cancelled, and nearly a third supporting a further postponement — an option the International Olympic Committee has already ruled out.
While no overseas visitors will be allowed to enter to be spectators at this year’s Olympics, the event is set to being thousands of athletes — including Ireland’s qualified sailors Annalise Murphy, Robert Dickson and Sean Waddilove — together along with media, sponsors and officials for the two weeks of competition.
Hosting such numbers “domestic, political and economic purposes — ignoring scientific and moral imperatives — is contradictory to Japan’s commitment to global health and human security,” several medical experts have said.
The Guardian has more on the story HERE.