Tokyo Olympics: expert fears Games could ‘absolutely become a superspreading event’
- Organisers ‘can never completely reduce the probability of infections’ despite ‘great’ precautions, University of Texas researcher says
- Ruling out quarantines or vaccines, Tokyo Games to rely on ‘playbooks’ ahead of what will be the world’s biggest Covid-19 bubble
The Tokyo Summer Olympics have survived being postponed, a mountain of scandal and bad publicity. Now comes the real challenge: pulling off the world’s biggest sporting event safely in the middle of a pandemic.
“Based on the number of people arriving and the prevalence of the disease around the globe, the Olympics absolutely could become a superspreading event that leads to quite a number of infections, as well as spreading internationally as people return home,” said Spencer Fox, a research associate at the University of Texas at Austin who specialises in infectious disease modelling. “The precautions they have in place are great, but you can never completely reduce the probability of infections.”
Organisers are relying on a series of six “playbooks” of rules that detail how participants of the Olympics and Paralympics can compete, move around and socialise, in order to manage the risks of what will be the world’s biggest Covid-19 bubble.
While those involved in the Games will be somewhat isolated from the Japanese public, Tokyo has ruled out using two core tenets of containment: quarantines and vaccinations. Without those, experts say infections could spread.
If they do, not only could the Olympics become the site of a sizeable outbreak that spreads into Japan, it could become a cauldron of novel variants gathered from around the world. The risk is that athletes could bring them home, potentially fuelling the pandemic.