The number of athletes, organizers and journalists who tested positive for coronavirus has risen to 80 out of a total of over 20 thousand people checked in Tokyo ahead of the Olympic Games. Of the 80 positives, only 9 are athletes, of which 5 are hosted in the Olympic Village. The first positive athletes to give up competitions by retiring from the competition are a Chilean Taekwondo fighter, Fernanda Aguirre, a Dutch skateboarder, Candy Jacobs, and US beach volleyball player Taylor Crabb. Meanwhile, the Japanese government has announced that the leaders of at least fifteen countries and international organizations have confirmed their presence at the opening ceremony to be held on Friday. This is a significantly reduced number compared to the 40 leaders who participated in the opening of the Rio Games in 2016 and this is due to the pandemic and the severe health restrictions imposed by the host country.
Among those who have confirmed their presence at the new Olympic stadium in Tokyo are the French President Emmanuel Macron and the Mongolian Prime Minister Luvsannamsrai Oyun-Erdene, as well as the American First Lady, Jill Biden. Some 70 foreign authorities representing the corresponding sports ministries will also participate in the ceremony, as announced at a press conference by the Japanese government spokesman, Katsunobu Kato.
The visit of world leaders, Kato stressed, will be for Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga “a precious opportunity to strengthen personal trust” at a time when face-to-face meetings are severely limited by the pandemic. In the host country there is also the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, where he participated in a meeting with the International Olympic Committee (CIO), although his presence at the inauguration has not been confirmed. . Yesterday, the head of the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee, Toshiro Muto, did not rule out any scenario in the case of an explosion of Covid infections in the Olympic village, not even a cancellation of the event at the last moment: “We cannot predict what will happen in terms of infections », he observed,« they could both increase and decrease and we will think about what to do when the problem arises ». The IOC president, Thomas Bach, was more reassuring, however, observing that “the Olympic Games risked falling apart” and that “in the last 15 months we have had to make daily decisions on very uncertain bases, we had doubts every day, there are stay sleepless nights ».