TOKYO – A Japanese professor of infectious disease said he is “very pessimistic” the postponed Tokyo Olympics can open in 15 months.
“To be honest with you, I don’t think the Olympics is likely to be held next year,” Kentaro Iwata, a professor of infectious disease at Kobe University, said Monday while speaking in English on a teleconference. “Holding the Olympics needs two conditions: one, controlling COVID-19 in Japan, and controlling COVID-19 everywhere.”
Toshiro Muto, the CEO of the Tokyo organizing committee, expressed his own reservations 10 days earlier. Since then, the organizing committee and the International Olympic Committee have said there is no “Plan B” other than working for the Olympics to open on July 23, 2021.
“I am very pessimistic about holding the Olympic Games next summer unless you hold the Olympic Games in a totally different structure such as no audience, or a very limited participation,” Iwata said, speaking at a forum arranged by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo.
“You have to invite so many athletes from many, many places, which is not very compatible with this COVID-19 infection that is causing a pandemic. Japan might be able to control this disease by next summer. And I wish we could. But I don’t think that will happen everywhere on Earth.”