Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games staff test Covid-19 positive as nurses stretched and rugby cancelled

Tokyo’s preparations for the Olympic Games have been further hampered by the Covid-19 pandemic after a weekend that saw several positive cases, protests from medical workers and a top rugby match cancelled. Six people who helped with Japan’s Olympic Torch relay were diagnosed with Covid-19, bringing the total number of participants in the event who got the coronavirus to eight, organisers said. The six people, who included a man in his 20s and another man in his 30s, helped in the relay in the southern prefecture of Kagoshima on April 27, Tokyo 2020 said in a statement late on Saturday. All of them assisted with traffic control and wore masks, with three of them doing so in the city of Amami and the other three in the city of Kirishima, said the organisers. Earlier last month, two other people who helped with the torch relay on the southern island of Shikoku were diagnosed with Covid-19, including a police officer in his 30s who guided traffic in Kagawa prefecture. The Tokyo 2020 organisers urged people to comply with Covid-19 guidelines. Japanese authorities are determined to protect Games participants and a local population that opinion surveys have shown is largely opposed to the Olympics due to fears the event will lead to more Covid-19 infections. Japan last month declared a Covid-19 state of emergency for the major population centres of Tokyo and Osaka and two other areas set to last until May 11 to contain a fourth wave of infections. Meanwhile, some nurses in Japan are incensed at a request from Tokyo Olympic organisers to have 500 of them dispatched to help out with the Games. They say they are already near the breaking point dealing with the pandemic. Olympic officials have said they will need 10,000 medical workers to staff the Games, and the request for more nurses comes amid a new spike in the virus with Tokyo and Osaka under a state of emergency. “Beyond feeling anger, I was stunned at the insensitivity,” Mikito Ikeda, a nurse in Nagoya in central Japan, told the Associated Press. “It shows how human life is being taken lightly.” The appeal for more nurses is typical of the impromptu changes coming almost daily as organisers and the International Olympic Committee try to pull off the games in the midst of a pandemic. 現場の看護師の声 「わたしたちは使い捨ての駒ではありません！！！」 看護師は患者を守るため必死なんです。 オリンピックへの派遣をしている余裕はありません。#看護師の五輪派遣は困ります#いのちまもる#看護の日 pic.twitter.com/9eUplZVyXI — 愛知県医労連 (@irouren) April 28, 2021 The Olympics are set to open in just under three months, entailing the entry into Japan of 15,000 Olympic and Paralympic athletes and thousands of other officials, judges, sponsors, media personnel and broadcasters. In a statement from the Japan Federation of Medical Workers’ Unions, secretary general Susumu Morita said the focus should be on the pandemic, not the Olympics. “We must definitely stop the proposal to send as Olympic volunteers those nurses, tasked with protecting the fight against the serious coronavirus pandemic,” Morita said. “I am extremely infuriated by the insistence of pursuing the Olympics despite the risk to patients’ and nurses’ health and lives.” A protest message saying that nurses were opposed to holding the Olympics went viral on Japanese Twitter recently, being retweeted hundreds of thousands of times. Even before the pandemic, Japanese nurses were overworked and poorly paid compared with their counterparts in the United States or Britain. Nursing is not only physically taxing but also emotionally draining, said Ikeda, who has been a nurse for 10 years. He said many nurses worry about getting infected themselves, with vaccination rates in Japan reported at only 1-2 per cent. “It’s hard for any hospital to go without even one nurse, and they want 500,” Ikeda said. “Why do they think that’s even possible?” Deaths attributed to Covid-19 in Japan have just passed 10,000. -所属選手の新型コロナ陽性判定（続報）ならびにプレーオフトーナメント準々決勝中止のお知らせ- 日頃から応援していただいている皆様、関係者の皆様には、ご心配をおかけし大変申し訳ございません。心よりお詫び申し上げます。 詳細はこちらをご確認ください。https://t.co/nmNiTJHmJ5 — リコーブラックラムズ (@RICOH_BlackRams) May 1, 2021 Haruo Ozaki, chairman of the Tokyo Medical Association, has said it will be “extremely difficult” to hold the Olympics because of the new variants that are spreading. He also explained that Japan’s medical community has been stretched while treating coronavirus patients and also doing the vaccine roll-out. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga suggested that nurses who have quit their jobs could help with the Olympics, although some resignations are tied to the stressful work dealing with coronavirus patients. “I hear many are taking time off, and so it should be possible,” Suga said last week, in a widely criticised remark. Public opinion surveys show up to 80 per cent of Japanese people want the Olympics cancelled or postponed again. Much of the bill for holding the Olympics, estimated officially at US$15.4 billion (HK$120 billion), falls on Japanese taxpayers. On Saturday, a Japan Top League play-off quarter-final fixture between Ricoh Black Rams and Suntory Sungoliath scheduled for May 9 was cancelled after 22 players from Ricoh tested positive for Covid-19, Kyodo news agency reported. Ricoh reported nine cases on Wednesday, followed by another 13 on Friday, and the Japan Rugby Football Union (JRFU) decided on Saturday to scrap the game at Showa Denko Dome Oita as the team cannot register the required 23 players, Kyodo reported. Suntory will advance to the May 16 semi-final if they can register 23 players.