Tokyo Olympics unlikely to go ahead unless coronavirus vaccine is developed, warns Japan Medical Association

The Tokyo Olympics are unlikely to go ahead unless a vaccine is developed for the coronavirus, according to the head of the Japan Medical Association.

Already, the Games have been delayed by a year because of the Covid-19 pandemic and Yoshitake Yokokura called on developers to “step up the pace in producing treatments and vaccines”.

And he warned: “My opinion is that it will be hard to host them [the Games] unless an effective vaccine is developed.

“The global state of infections at that particular time will be a key issue. It will be difficult even if the situation in Japan has become better if infections continue to spread abroad.”

The cost of delaying the Games is set to run into the billions, with Japan set to bear the brunt as well as the International Olympic Committee.

Meanwhile, Tokyo 2020 president Yoshiro Mori warned that the Olympics would be scrapped altogether rather than delayed for a second time from its revised place on the sporting calendar of the end of next July.

“No, in that case the Olympics will be scrapped,” Mori said in an interview with the Japanese newspaper Nikkan Sports when asked if they could yet be postponed to 2022.

But he said he was confident they could go ahead as planned. “The Olympics would be much more valuable than any Olympics in the past if we could go ahead with it after winning this battle,” he said. “We have to believe this otherwise our hard work and efforts will not be rewarded.”