Yesterday (4 August), the organisers of the Tokyo Olympics had confirmed several Covid-19 cases among its participants since the games started on 23 July.
The spokesman for the Tokyo Organising committee, Masanori Takaya said “I have to say it is a cluster.”
According to Kyodo News, there are at least 29 new cases detected, including the 3 Greek artistic swimmers, bringing the cumulative total to over 300.
It is also reported that the sharp rise in Covid-19 cases since 23 July is mainly caused by the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus.
Meanwhile, the 12-member Greek artistic swimming team was being tested for Covid-19, where 4 athletes and 1 official have been confirmed positive for Covid-19 and the test results of the remaining 7 members showed negative. All of them had already left the village and is being relocated to the isolation facilities.
This comes after Greece announced that it will withdraw from the artistic swimming competitions on Tuesday (3 August).
Yesterday (4 August), the Tokyo metropolitan government had reported another daily record of 4,166 Covid-19 cases.
The Government’s top Covid-19 adviser, Shigeru Omi told a parliamentary committee that the number of Olympic-related infections remained relatively low but the Olympics have had an impact on people’s consciousness.
Early August, the Japan’s National Institute of Infectious Diseases had reported that the Delta variant is believed to be responsible for roughly 90% of new infections in the Kanto region including Tokyo and its surrounding prefectures.
Responding to that matter, Prime Minister of Japan, Yoshihide Suga and the senior government officials said that there is no link between the Olympic games and the Covid-19 spike. He emphasizes that strict and adequate measures have been put in place to prevent participants from coming into contact with the Japanese public.
Nonetheless, the virus positivity rate stood at 0.02% among the Olympic athletes and stakeholders, with over 500,000 tests conducted so far.
Takaya also said that the daily figures reported by Japanese government includes athletes from other countries without identifying from which country. The reported figures includes the athletes, there are 19 contractors, 4 volunteers and 2 games-linked officials and 24 of them were residents of Japan.
He added that one case reported by the committee on Sunday proved to be negative later and was eliminated from the cumulative total, now standing at 322.
The numbers do not include those announced by Japanese central and local governments.
The Tokyo metropolitan police separately said it has confirmed a total of 23 COVID-19 cases among officers dispatched from across the country for Olympic security assistance.
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