Tokyo Olympics shouldn't be a superspreader. Cancel them

Athletes are not required to be quarantined, nor must they be vaccinated. PHOTO: AFP

(NYTIMES) The Tokyo Olympics are in big trouble. Postponed by a year and slated to begin in July, the Games have become a political flash point in Japan, where 60 per cent of the population opposes staging them this summer and where less than 2 per cent of the population is vaccinated for Covid-19.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC), local Olympic organisers and Japan's ruling party maintain that the Games must go on, even amid pandemic conditions. As Covid-19 cases surged in Japan in January, IOC president Thomas Bach said he had "no reason whatsoever to believe that the Olympic Games in Tokyo will not open on July 23".

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