Japan’s ailing vaccination programme could be nail in the coffin for Olympic Games

A medical personnel presents a containers with water, which are used to preserve the vaccinnes in a deep freezer

With less than six months before the opening ceremony for the Tokyo Olympic Games, there are concerns at the roll-out of Japan’s coronavirus vaccination programme — in addition to other problems brought on by the pandemic. 

Yoshihide Suga, the Japanese prime minister, has said that delivery of the vaccine is the key to a safe and successful Olympics and Japan has purchased sufficient stocks of the Pfizer version of the drug to inoculate 72 million people, more than half the population. 

The vaccines will not be ready to administer until late February, however, and there are concerns about a shortage of freezer units to transport the medicine.  

Yet the organisers of the postponed 2020 Games are adamant that the event will open on schedule on July 23. 

Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, declared in an online press conference from Berlin on Wednesday that the IOC, the Japanese government, the Tokyo metropolitan authorities and the local organising committee are refusing to even consider an alternative scenario.

A healthcare worker, right, holds an empty syringe during a vaccination simulation at a gymnasium of Kawasaki City

“Our task is to organise Olympic Games and not to cancel Olympic Games”, he said. “That is why we are working day and night to organise safe Olympic Games”. 

Mr Bach added that speculation about the event, including a possible second postponement or the outright cancellation of Tokyo 2020, was not helpful. 

Yet the challenges are daunting. 

Japan may have a relatively low number of infections — just under 400,000 in a nation of 126 million — but is the last major industrial nation to start mass vaccinations and there is concern that the shortage of freezer units. 

Medical workers are scheduled to be first in line for inoculations, but that will not happen until the end of February. Health authorities will then need to vaccinate more than 850,000 people a day to inoculate half the population before the games begin — which may not be possible in rural parts of the country and in areas where medical staff are already complaining of exhaustion. 

More Japanese are also expressing their opposition to the Games going ahead, with 80 percent of the people responding to a recent poll saying that given the continued spread of the virus and the shortage of time, they would prefer that the Olympics were either delayed for another year or cancelled entirely. 

“We can’t hold them; it’s as simple as that”, said Mari Miyamoto, an office worker from Tokyo. “I know the organisers are saying that precautions will be taken and that they will deliver a ‘safe Games’, but they are playing Russian roulette with other people’s lives. 

“It is highly irresponsible to let thousands of people — athletes, officials, journalists, sponsors — into the country at a time like this”, she added. “I know the Games are all about money now, but mutant strains of the virus are popping up and it would be very easy for one of them to come into Japan. 

“It’s just too dangerous”. 

Masahiko Nakayama, a manager at fridge manufacturer Kanou Reiki, shows a deep freezer which will be used to store COVID-19 coronavirus vaccines, at the company warehouse in Sagamihara

Yet there are others who side with Mr Suga and the IOC and say that if all the precautions are taken — including limited crowds or having no spectators at all, athletes leaving Tokyo immediately after their events are completed and stringent testing — then Tokyo can still pull it off. 

“I think conditions will be very different in the summer, the vaccinations will be taking place and the virus will naturally decline in the hot summer months — so they can do it”, said Yoko Tsukamoto, a professor of infection control at the Health Sciences University of Hokkaido.

“There is obviously a lot to be done still, but we are learning about this virus all the time and have already made great strides with the vaccine, so as long as everyone who comes into Japan has been inoculated and tests negative when they arrive, then I see no reason why we can’t hold the Games”, she said. 

“I was not able to get tickets when they first went on sale, but there will be far fewer foreign spectators coming to Tokyo now”, she said. “I’m so confident that the Games can go ahead safely that I’m planning to apply for seats at some of the track and field events”.