Japanese virus expert pessimistic Tokyo will be able to host Olympics in 2021

A professor of infectious diseases at Japan’s Kobe University said Monday that he is “very pessimistic” about the likelihood of the postponed Tokyo Olympics taking place in July 2021.

“To be honest with you, I don’t think the Olympics is likely to be held next year,” Kentaro Iwata, said on a teleconference, according to The Associated Press. “Holding the Olympics needs two conditions; one, controlling COVID-19 in Japan, and controlling COVID-19 everywhere.”

“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,” he said at a forum hosted 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,” he said, according to the AP. “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.”

The availability of a vaccine, which most experts have said is likely to be available in 2021 at the earliest, may be a deciding factor in whether the Olympics take place on the rescheduled date, Devi Sridhar, a professor of global health at the University of Edinburgh, told the BBC.

“If we do get a vaccine within the next year then actually I think that [the Olympics] is realistic,” she said. “The vaccine will be the game-changer — an effective, affordable, available vaccine.

Japan was largely spared in the initial wave of the pandemic, but its large cities, including Tokyo, have seen a spike in cases in recent weeks, with more than 10,000 confirmed cases countrywide and nearly 250 deaths as of Monday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.