COVID-19 anxiety eclipses Olympics as athletes test positive

Growing anxiety over COVID-19 dominates attention to the Tokyo Olympics ahead of Friday’s opening ceremony, as infections emerging this week have sidelined athletes from the Games.

After the pandemic triggered a one-year delay of the Olympics, the virus continues to wreak havoc on the Games as dozens of athletes and staff tested positive in the days leading up to the competition global.

Organizers said on Tuesday that 71 cases of COVID-19 had been identified as linked to the Tokyo Olympics, including 31 among international visitors flocking to the Japanese capital for the Games.

Brian McCloskey, health adviser for the International Olympic Committee (IOC), said earlier this week that the number of cases was “in fact extremely low and probably lower than we expected to see.”

“If I thought all the tests we did would be negative, then I wouldn’t bother to do the tests in the first place,” he said in a briefing. “We do the tests because they are a way to screen out people who might develop an infection that could become a risk later.”

Public health experts say these cases are inevitable as the pandemic continues around the world, but strict mitigation measures have a chance of containing the virus and stop serious epidemics at the Olympics.

Leana Wen, an emergency physician and professor of public health at George Washington University, said the Olympics are “the ultimate test” of whether rigorous testing, quarantine, contact tracing and methods of isolation could contain the virus.

She suggested that if cases worsen, organizers could consider other containment protocols such as requiring N95 masks before deciding to cancel the Games as a whole.

Wen acknowledged that there was a risk with “any mass event” of spreading the virus and its variants to new places, but said other trips and events present similar dangers.

“I think in some ways the Olympics are unfairly singled out when there are many other sources of COVID-19 risk happening all the time, including here in the United States,” she said. stated, citing the indoor mask requirements lifted.

The IOC previously published a 70-page playbook for athletes asking them to take precautions such as daily temperature checks and limited contact before traveling to Japan. Athletes will have to pass multiple COVID-19 tests both before their arrival and during the Games, with those who test positive to self-isolate and their close contacts identified.

The Tokyo Olympics will also be different from previous competitions in other ways, with spectators absent and winning athletes wrapping their medals around their necks to prevent the spread of the virus.

Yet even with the precautions, athletes have already tested positive for COVID-19. American tennis player Coco Gauff and basketball player Katie Lou Samuelson will miss the Games after contracting the virus.

Kara Eaker, a replacement for the U.S. women’s gymnastics team, also tested positive for the virus, sending her and teammate Leanne Wong to quarantine. The team has since moved to stay at a hotel instead of the Olympic Village, a coach confirmed on Twitter.

Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research Policy at the University of Minnesota, co-authored an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine that called for a risk management approach to planning the Games.

“We realized that they were missing elements of the plan that were essential in trying to reduce the impact of COVID on the Olympics,” he said.

Osterholm told The Hill he believes there are “still major holes” in the IOC’s current prevention plans, noting in particular the lack of risk assessments for each venue and sport.

“At this point they are being held, so all we can do is try to do our best to limit transmission,” he said.

The organizing committee for the Tokyo Olympics has not ruled out the possibility of stopping the Games in the event of an increase in cases, committee chief Toshiro Muto said on Tuesday.

But Tara Kirk Sell, senior researcher at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said that “saying no is not the only risk mitigation measure we have in our toolkit these days.”

“There is a lot that we have learned over the last year about transmission, about how to control the disease, and we also have a great vaccine that has really been a game changer,” she said. .

IOC President Thomas Bach said last week that 85% of athletes and officials living in the Olympic Village are fully vaccinated and that almost all IOC members and staff are “vaccinated or immunized”.

But the vaccination rate in Japan is lower, with around 22% of the population fully vaccinated, according to Our World in Data.

At the same time, Tokyo began its fourth state of emergency this month amid a local and global increase in COVID-19 cases and the spread of the highly transmissible delta variant.

National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins told Washington Post Live on Monday that he believed “everyone was worried” that the Olympics could turn into a super-propagator event, noting that vaccinations were “the best way to protect yourself against this transformation into something worse”.

“But obviously this needs to be watched very carefully,” he said.

Since Tuesday, the first lady Jill bidenJill BidenBiden says Eid al-Adha has ‘special meaning’ amid pandemic still plans to attend Tokyo Olympics as White House plans to “monitor situation”, White House spokesman Jen psakiJen PsakiUS Won’t Block Completion of Russian Nord Stream 2 Pipeline Biden Says US Has ‘A Way To Go’ On Coronavirus Fox News Denies Contact With White House Over Immunization Coverage MORE told reporters.

“Our team will follow very strict health and safety protocols, limiting engagement with the public, keeping our footprint as small as possible,” she said. “Our COVID team at the White House as well as health officials from the IOC and the Government of Japan all agree that the strict protocols and health measures in place will help keep our delegation safe. “