Tokyo warns locals pose a higher Covid risk to Olympics than visitors

According to experts studying the event, Covid-19’s biggest danger to the Tokyo Olympics is not the thousands of athletes and officials coming from abroad, but whether it entails greater mobility and socialization among people. local.

Although public anxiety in Japan it focuses on the 100,000 athletes, coaches, officers, and reporters they have began to arrive Seven weeks before the games, epidemiologists said the biggest risk was a change in public behavior.

His analysis helps explain why Japan has pushed the Olympics forward despite widespread opposition, because Tokyo may limit the public mix if it finally decides to hold the games without spectators.

“More than the number of people, it’s how they behave. That’s the problem, ”said a Japanese health administrator who has seen official epidemiological advice.

Tokyo and other major cities in Japan continue under one State of emergency Covid-19, prompting calls from doctors, business leaders and up to 80% of the Japanese public to cancel the Olympics. Slow progress vaccination means that most Japanese are still vulnerable to the disease.

Japan has administered at least one dose of vaccine to only 9% of its population,

Experts identify four different risks for holding the games this summer: Olympic visitors infecting the coronavirus; increased mobility among the Japanese public; effort in medical resources; and the threat of entry of new variants of Covid-19 into the country.

Of these risks, most analysts think the danger of Covid’s Olympic bearers is small.

Taisuke Nakata, a researcher at the University of Tokyo, applied a standard epidemiological model to the Olympics. Even with extremely pessimistic assumptions (only half of visitors are vaccinated, none of them respect quarantine and 100 infections are lost when testing at the border) they have little impact on Japan’s Covid-19 pandemic.

According to the Nakata model, the result of this scenario is an increase of about 15 infections a day a few months later.

“Intuitively, it’s that the number of Olympic visitors is less than 1% of Tokyo’s population,” he said. Because coronavirus is already common in Japan, athletes and other visitors can’t speed up the pandemic much.

In fact, 80% of visitors are expected to have vaccines and will enter strict quarantine with daily testing of Covid-19, so its impact on infections in Japan should be minimal.

The most serious threat is that the Olympics will cause a change in behavior on the part of the Japanese public. Tokyo has controlled Covid-19 by closing restaurants at 8pm and asking them not to serve alcohol to limit the amount of high risk socialization.

Filling stadiums would have the opposite effect. “If the athlete you support wins a gold medal, you’ll shout for joy and everyone will say‘ let’s have a drink, ’” said Shigeru Omi, the doctor responsible for Japan’s Covid-19 response, in testimony. in parliament.

In The Nakata model, the increase in activity of the Japanese public risked an increase of 90-120 infections per day in a few months.

“Instead of contact between athletes or between athletes and regulars, it’s clearly much more important to limit the movement of the Japanese public,” Omi said.

The third area of ​​risk is stress in the medical system, both in terms of the doctors and nurses needed to attend the Olympics, and the pressure of more coronavirus cases. As a result, clinicians in Japan tend to be more negative about gambling than epidemiologists.

“It will take doctors away from university and city hospitals,” said Satoshi Hori, an infection control expert at Juntendo University in Tokyo. “They are unpaid volunteers. They are currently busy in hospitals, so it will cause a shortage of staff. “

Hori said the Olympics should be canceled. “For a short event, keeping it in a bubble is handy, but having so many events in so many places for weeks, can it really be held in a bubble?” he asked.

The ultimate danger is that a visitor to the games will bring a new variant of Covid-19 to Japan. Naoto Ueyama, head of Japan’s Medical Union, has even speculated that holding the games could lead to a “Tokyo Olympic” strain of the disease.

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However, most known variants, such as those first detected in the United Kingdom and India, are already present in Japan, although no recent variant is found in Vietnam. If the Covid-19 variants had not reached Japan, the additional risk of the Olympics would have been much higher.

Putting all the risks together, Japan is thinking about how to manage the Olympics instead of whether to move on, the health official said. “We have held various sporting events from sumo to baseball during the Covid-19. We have the experience of keeping the coronavirus at current levels without a hard block.

Unless the government loses its nerve in recent weeks, Japan will soon try to repeat the trick while hosting the biggest sporting event on the planet.