Day: July 22, 2021

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA – After a one-year pandemic delay, the Tokyo Olympics will formally get under way Friday, with an opening ceremony that will be scaled back but still celebratory.

The event will be held amid tens of thousands of empty seats in Tokyo’s Olympic Stadium, with only about 900 dignitaries and other officials attending because of COVID-19 precautions.

The opening ceremony, themed “United by Emotion,” may be one of the most normal elements of what figures to be the most unusual Olympic Games ever.

The ceremony will feature familiar elements such as fireworks, drones, musical performances and a torch-lighting ceremony. Athletes will also march and wave their countries’ flags during a socially distanced parade of nations, organizers say.

“A minimum of 1 meter and possibly 2 meters of social distancing is required, and they have to wear masks all the time,” said Hidemasa Nakamura, a Tokyo 2020 organizing committee official.

The Japanese public is broadly opposed to holding the Games, fearing they will worsen Japan’s already deteriorating pandemic situation.

Tokyo on Thursday reported nearly 2,000 new COVID-19 infections – a six-month high for a city that is already under a state of emergency.

In the capital, public viewing areas have been canceled. Bars have been asked to not serve alcohol. The torch relay, an Olympic mainstay, was replaced by online lighting ceremonies.

So far, 87 people associated with the Olympics have tested positive for the virus. That includes several athletes, whose Olympic dreams were cut short. Still, organizers have played down fears of a cluster infection breaking out in the Olympic Village.

“There is no one place that has no virus cases. That is impossible. Therefore, some cases will emerge. What is important is the ability to identify positive cases quickly and isolate them, and we believe that this is implemented well to hold a safe and secure Games,” Nakamura said.

Though seemingly every Olympics sees public discontent, the Tokyo Games have been ridden by an impressive number of negative headlines.

Besides the COVID-19 fears, the Games also went massively over budget. Earlier this year, the head of the Tokyo organizing committee resigned following outrage over his comments that women talk too much.

This week, the opening ceremony director, Kentaro Kobayashi, was fired after footage emerged of him mocking the Holocaust in a 1998 comedy sketch.

The Games are so toxic that major sponsors are backing away. Earlier this week, Toyota, one of Japan’s most recognizable brands, announced it would not air any Olympics-related TV commercials in Japan and that its top officials would not attend the opening ceremony.

“As someone who’s studied the political history of the Olympics, these really jump out at some wild times in terms of Olympics land,” said Jules Boykoff, a former Olympic athlete and author of several books on the Games.

Despite the controversy, organizers hope that the focus will shift to sports once the competition begins.

According to Gracenote, a data analytics company, the United States is projected to lead all countries with 96 medals, including 40 gold medals. It would be the seventh consecutive Summer Olympics for the U.S. to lead the overall medal count.

Source: Voice of America

GENEVA – The World Health Organization is urging African countries to ramp up preparations for COVID-19 vaccination rollouts in anticipation of the imminent arrival of millions of vaccine doses on the continent. WHO reports more than 6.2 million people have been infected with COVID-19 and more than 159,000 have died.

New cases of COVID-19 in Africa have fallen slightly following eight weeks of a fast-moving surge. The decline is attributed to a sharp drop in cases in South Africa. However, the World Health Organization reports the situation could change quickly as violent protests and mass gatherings in the country could trigger another rise in cases.

WHO regional director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti says Africa’s third wave is not over. She notes 21 countries, three more than last week, are experiencing a resurgence. She says the highly contagious delta variant has now been detected in 26 countries and 13 of them need more oxygen due to a surge in cases.

She says Africa continues to lag in COVID-19 vaccines, with just 20 million Africans or 1.5 percent of the continent’s population fully vaccinated. But she says Africa’s supply crunch is starting to ease.

She says the first delivery of doses donated by the United States through the COVAX Facility is arriving in Africa this week and altogether nearly 60 million doses from other sources are expected in the coming weeks.

“African countries must go all out and speed up their vaccine rollouts by five to six times if they are to get all these doses into arms and fully vaccinate the most vulnerable 10 percent of their people by the end of September,” Moeti said. “Around 3.5 to four million doses are administered each week on the continent, but this needs to rise to 21 million doses each week at the very least to meet this goal.”

Moeti says more than half a billion doses are expected through COVAX alone this year. This massive influx, she says, means countries must up their game.

“We need to address the issue of vaccine hesitancy,” Moeti said. “So, this communication—targeting people, targeting the messages that we are tracking and the misinformation or the fears and misconceptions is absolutely vital now because the time to mobilize people to be ready to be vaccinated is not when the vaccines are landing. It is now in this narrow period of a window that we have to do all of this.”

Regional director Moeti says countries must scale up their operations. She says countries need sufficient vaccine sites, storage facilities, adequate transport, plans for distribution and, of course, health care workers to carry out this life-saving activity.

Source: Voice of America