ROME – "If the pandemic is not under control in 2021, the Olympics will be canceled".
This was underlined by the president of the organizing committee of the Olympic Games in Tokyo, Yoshiro Mori , in an interview with the Japanese newspaper Nikkan Sports.
The coronavirus pandemic has already forced the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics, which are currently scheduled to open on July 23, 2021.
However, the president of the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee warned that no further postponements are possible and that therefore if the pandemic is not under control by the date scheduled for the Games, the pandemic will be canceled.
Mori replied with a categorical "No" to the question of whether the Olympics could be further postponed:
"In that case they will be canceled," he said in an interview with the Japanese newspaper Nikkan Sports.
Recalling that previously the Games were canceled only in wartime, Mori compared the fight against the coronavirus to that against an "invisible enemy".
But he also reassured that if the pandemic is successfully kept under control, "we will keep the Olympics in peace next summer."
A few days ago it was the Japanese infectious disease specialist Kentaro Iwata , a professor at the University of Kobe, who sounded the alarm, calling himself "pessimistic" about the possibility of a smooth running of the Olympics in the summer of 2021.
“Honestly, I do not consider it probable – he said -, the Games require that the pandemic is under control everywhere since athletes and spectators from all over the world will arrive in Tokyo.
Japan could do it by July 2021, but I don't think the same can be said for the rest of the planet. "
To his voice was added that of Yoshitate Yokokura , president of the country's medical association:
"Unless an effective vaccine is developed – he explained -, I think it will be difficult to see the Olympics next year. I am not saying that they should not take place, but the epidemic is not limited only to Japan but is a worldwide problem ". (source ANSA)
Source: Blitz Quotidiano