As recently as mid-March, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Japanese organizers were still reticent to postpone the 2020 Games for the continued spread of the novel coronavirus, let alone cancel Tokyo altogether. Finally, as national Olympic committees began announcing they would pull their athletes from a Games staged in 2020, on March 24 organizers agreed to postpone the Games until 2021.
But without an aggressive timeline for releasing a COVID-19 vaccine, suggests Japan Medical Association (JMA) president Yoshitake Yokokura, it’s possible the next Olympics staged aren’t in Tokyo at all, but in Beijing for the 2022 Winter Games.
“Unless an effective vaccine is developed, I expect hosting the Olympics will be difficult,” Yokokura said in a media briefing Tuesday.
On Tuesday, Tokyo organizing committee president Yoshiro Mori said in an interview with Japanese daily Nikkan Sports that if the Games cannot go off in the summer of 2021 as planned, they would be “scrapped” rather than delayed any further.