Preparations for Olympics continue as US warns against traveling to Japan
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This week, the CDC and U.S. Department of State issued a level 4 travel advisory that warned Americans not to travel to Japan due to a “very high level” of COVID-19.
“Because of the current situation in Japan even fully vaccinated travelers may be at risk for getting and spreading COVID-19 variants and should avoid all travel to Japan,” the CDC said.
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The warning came just 2 months before the Summer Olympics are slated to begin in Tokyo on July 23 after being postponed last year over concerns about the pandemic.
Organizers have reassured the public that the games will be safe.
“It has become clearer than ever that these games will be safe for everyone participating and the Japanese people,” International Olympic Committee (IOC) vice president John Coates said recently.
According to tracking by Johns Hopkins, there have been more than 738,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Japan, including more than 12,000 deaths. Three million Japanese citizens are fully vaccinated — just 2.4% of the country’s total population, according to Our World in Data.
In a recent editorial published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Annie K. Sparrow, MD, MPH, assistant professor of population health science and policy at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, and other experts voiced concerns over the upcoming games, writing that the IOC’s decision to continue with the Olympics “is not informed by the best scientific evidence.”
“The playbooks maintain that athletes participate at their own risk, while failing both to distinguish the various levels of risk faced by athletes and to recognize the limitations of measures such as temperature screenings and face coverings,” Sparrow and colleagues wrote. “Similarly, the IOC has not heeded lessons from other large sporting events.”
The authors recommended that WHO create an emergency committee featuring professionals in occupational safety and health, infectious disease epidemiology, building and ventilation engineering, and athlete representatives “to consider these factors and advise on a risk-management approach for the Tokyo Olympics.”
Former U.S. Olympic silver medalist swimmer Tara Kirk Sell, PhD, now a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said there are concerns that going forward with the Olympics could spread COVID-19 among athletes and potentially increase transmission in Japan.
“I think that many of these impacts can be mitigated,” Sell told Healio. “We know a lot more about how the disease spreads, how to prevent it, and how to test for it than we did a year ago. Plus, we have some very effective vaccines that are rolling out. My major concern is that, while it is possible to have a safe Olympics, it seems like there may be a waning desire in Japan to host the Olympics, and I think that is an important consideration.”
Infectious Disease News Editorial Board Member Carlos del Rio, MD, executive associate dean at Emory University School of Medicine, said that as long as mitigation strategies are implemented, the Olympics are unlikely to be a “super-spreader event.”
“I think the Olympics can go on safely with mitigation,” del Rio told Healio. “Although Japan is
having a surge of around 4,000 cases per day — we have about 30,000 in comparison — Japan is really scaling up vaccinations. I would make sure every athlete and team is vaccinated.”
Although it may be safe to host the games, Sell noted several potential “problem points,” including shared dining, transportation, and managing close contacts without unnecessarily excluding individuals.
“It's clear now that Japan will not have a large portion of its population vaccinated by the time the Olympics start, so indoor gatherings especially are concerning with a lot of unvaccinated people — it wouldn't be a good idea to have domestic fans get together in crowded situations,” Sell said. “I think it's fairly reasonable to think that most athletes and staff can be in a bubble but there will still be volunteers, bus drivers, and other people mixing with the athletes. The Olympics are always expensive to put on, too, so it certainly needs the support of the Japanese population.”
The U.S. Olympic Committee did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.
References:
International Olympic Committee. Tokyo 2020 enters operational delivery mode. https://olympics.com/ioc/news/tokyo-2020-enters-operational-delivery-mode. Accessed May 26, 2021.
Johns Hopkins. Coronavirus Resource Center: Japan. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/region/japan. Accessed May 26, 2021.
Sparrow AK, et al. N Engl J Med. 2021;doi:10.1056/NEJMp2108567.
U.S. Department of State. Japan International Travel Information. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-travel/International-Travel-Country-Information-Pages/Japan.html. Accessed May 26, 2021.
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