'Far Too Early' To Judge Tokyo Entry Plans

(ATR) The efficacy of Japan’s Olympian entry requirements remains to be seen.

On Tuesday, Japanese Olympics Minister Seiko Hashimoto said the government may allow entry for Olympians coming from countries with little control over the Covid-19 outbreak.

In an email to Around the Rings, Dr. Zachary Binney, a sports-focused epidemiologist with Oxford College at Emory University says it "far too early" to know if this decision will be sound.

After largely containing the outbreak new cases in Japan have surged in July to nearly half the number at the April 12 peak.

However, the novel coronavirus has continued to confound researchers.

"There's no way to know right now what Japan or any other country will look like in May 2021," Binney said.

In his first interview with ATR, Binney made the same overarching statement: Covid-19 is too unpredictable to say anything authoritative about what may happen during the Tokyo Olympics next year.

Should Japanese authorities permit travel, Olympians and their entourage would need a standard 14-day quarantine either before leaving their home country or outside of the Olympic Village, Binney said.

However, the safest option, according to Binney, is still restricting travel from countries with widespread community transmission.

"But how many athletes would that mean excluding?" Binney posited. "I can understand the organizers wanting to keep that to a minimum. Quarantining delegations pre- or post-travel seems like a compromise solution."

While the exact details are yet to be finalized, Binney noted there is lots of time to come up with an acceptable plan.

"Home country quarantines would require placing a great deal of trust in national committees to correctly construct and strictly enforce them, but it's theoretically doable.

"If, for example, you put the American delegation in a bubble for 14 days before traveling and everybody tested negative throughout that process, then I think they could pretty safely travel to Japan and enter the Olympic Village."

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