The first inhabitant of the Olympic village to test positive for COVID

TOKYO – The first resident of the Olympic Village has tested positive for COVID-19, organizers of the Tokyo Olympics said on Saturday.

Officials said he was not an athlete with the Games opening in just under a week on July 23.

Tokyo officials, including Seiko Hashimoto, the chair of the organizing committee, confirmed the case and said the positive test took place on Friday. Organizers say for confidentiality reasons they can only offer a vague description and few details.

“In the current situation, for positive cases to arise is something we have to assume possible,” said Toshiro Muto, CEO of the Tokyo Organizing Committee.

OLYMPIC ATHLETE, STAFF TEST POSITIVE FOR THE VIRUS IN TOKYO

The person is simply identified as “Gaming personnel”. The person is also listed as a non-resident of Japan. Tokyo officials said the person has been placed in a 14-day quarantine.

The Tokyo Bay Olympic Village will be home to approximately 11,000 athletes during the Olympic Games and thousands of other staff.

IOC President Thomas Bach said this week that there was no risk of athletes in the village spreading the virus to Japanese or other village residents.

Organizers say that since July 1 and Saturday, 44 people under their “jurisdiction” have tested positive. None involved people living in the village and most are identified as “contractors” for Tokyo 2020 and “staff involved in the games”. The list includes an athlete – who tested positive on July 14 – and three members of the media.

Of the 44, only 12 are listed as “non-residents of Japan”.

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Organizers say athletes and staff who were absent from Tokyo during training camps are excluded from this list and from their accounts.

Tokyo officials said they could not give an estimate of the number of people in the village on Saturday.

On Friday in Tokyo, 1,271 new cases of COVID-19 were reported. They were 822 a week ago, and this marks the 27th day in a row that cases were higher than a week before. As of Thursday, new cases were reported at 1,308, the highest in six months.