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Tokio Olympics organizers express ‘full confidence’ in anti-Covid measures

Tokyo, Feb 17 (efe-epa).- The organizers of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games on Wednesday highlighted the positive reception of the anti-Covid measures outlined in the first version of their playbooks – guides – for participants.

“The publication of the playbooks has had an extraordinary impact on everyone. (…) The overwhelming result was total support and confidence,” Christophe Dubi, the Olympic Games executive director of the International Olympic Committee, said in a virtual appearance at a press conference in Tokyo.

Dubi said that the playbooks describe how the Games would be held in the backdrop of the pandemic and discuss issues that were causing the major uncertainties among the participants, such as arriving in Japan and the testing regime.

He added that the documents provide all the policies and norms that have to be followed during the Games, and had been made accessible to the general public to ensure transparency over the anti-Covid measures that the organizers want to adopt to guarantee “safe Games.”

The official claimed that right now all parties involved in organizing games were on the same page and much remained to be done against the clock, such as finalizing the details about each sport and venue, which will be revealed in later versions of the playbooks.

A second version of the playbooks for athletes, international federations and media is expected to be published in April with addition details, ahead of a final version in June, a month before the Games are set to be inaugurated on Jul. 23.

Meanwhile the communications director of the International Paralympic Committee, Crag Spence, said that around this time last year nobody could have imagined the possibility of holding the event amid a pandemic, but now it seemed possible.

Spence, who expressed satisfaction over the inclusiveness of the measures, underlined that Japan’s anti-Covid vaccination campaign was being launched on Wednesday, and that by the scheduled start of the Games, around a billion people were expected to be vaccinated worldwide.

Tokyo 2020 organizers have reiterated that they do not intend to make vaccination a prerequisite for participating in the Games, despite encouraging participants to get inoculated.

The executive in-charge of the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee, Hidemasa Nakamura, stressed the productivity of the discussions held so far and welcomed new queries and suggestions for future revisions of the playbooks.

“We formulated this playbook with the IOC and IPC six months ahead of the games. (…) There are so many things that we have not ironed out,” he said,adding that it was “very important” to receive negative feedback. EFE-EPA

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