Welcome to the Tokyo Olympics, where public health, money, and politics collide

It’s nighttime on the streets of Ibaraki prefecture in Japan when the Olympic torch comes by means of. A viral video exhibits the torch bearer’s gradual jog previous spectators lining the highway. Then, because the flame passes, a lady within the crowd shoots a water gun.

“Extinguish the Olympic flame! Oppose the Tokyo Olympics!” she shouts. Safety rushes round her.

Such is the backdrop for the upcoming Olympic and Paralympic video games, set to start on July 23 in Tokyo—the place covid-19 circumstances are rising, prompting the town to announce its fourth state of emergency because the begin of the pandemic. The rising caseload is particularly troubling as a result of the nation’s vaccination fee stays low. Simply 18% of Japan’s inhabitants is absolutely vaccinated. 

Nonetheless the Worldwide Olympic Committee is urgent on. At stake are billions of {dollars} in sunk prices—Tokyo’s Olympic stadium alone value $1.4 billion—in addition to billions extra in potential income for the IOC, Japan, native organizers, and broadcasters. 

A world well being disaster that’s removed from over, a staggering amount of cash, and a authorities set on making its gamble repay: the forces colliding in Tokyo are unprecedented. And even with strict new guidelines on the video games, specialists fear that covid-19 may worsen in Japan.

Protecting athletes protected

Practically 100,000 athletes, workers and relations, and others are anticipated to enter Japan for the Olympic and Paralympic video games, and organizers say they’re making an attempt their finest to maintain them protected.

Brian McCloskey, chair of an unbiased panel advising the IOC on covid-19 mitigation measures for Tokyo, acknowledges the issues. To scale back the danger of the virus spreading, athletes, workers, and others shall be intently monitored, he says. 

“The goal is to not don’t have any coronavirus in Tokyo,” says McCloskey. “The goal is to cease these particular person circumstances changing into clusters and spreading occasions.”

Athletes, workers, and officers shall be examined at varied intervals in the course of the video games. Residents of the Olympic Village shall be examined on daily basis, for instance, whereas the Japanese staff who are available in shut contact with athletes shall be examined extra steadily than the folks directing site visitors. McCloskey says a contact tracing system shall be used within the Olympic Village to assist include any circumstances that emerge. Anybody coming into Japan shall be required to obtain a contact tracing app, and athletes and members of the media are requested to activate GPS monitoring on their telephones. Organizers say location information will solely be used if there are covid circumstances. 

Because the video games have drawn nearer, measures have grown an increasing number of strict. Viewers members from different international locations have been barred months in the past, and it was introduced earlier this month that there gained’t be any audiences in any respect at venues in and round Tokyo. 

McCloskey says there may be precedent for working the video games amid a public well being menace—even when earlier ones weren’t on the identical scale as covid. When he suggested the IOC for the 2012 London Olympics, organizers thought-about the potential for a SARS pandemic to emerge, he says. And earlier than the 2016 video games in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, there have been issues about Zika (the WHO later stated there have been no reported circumstances in athletes or spectators).

For Tokyo, the IOC has launched a number of “playbooks” of directions for athletes, workers, volunteers, and press.

However regardless of stringent guidelines, the video games will inevitably imply folks mixing and interacting in ways in which in any other case wouldn’t occur.

“It’s not simply the occasion itself,” says Linsey Marr, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech, who’s a number one professional in airborne transmission of viruses. “It’s every little thing else related to the occasion: the lodges, the eating places, the technique of transportation.”