MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th December, 2021) Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games had no direct impact on the worsening coronavirus situation in the country, findings by Japan's National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID), published by the International Olympic Committee on Thursday, showed.
No new variants of the virus have spread among athletes taking part in competitions or the local population throughout the Games, held from July 23-August 8, according to genomic sequencing data from the Japanese government, the study said.
"Overall, there seems to be no negative, direct impact to the epidemic in Tokyo during the Games," Dr. Saito Tomoya, Director of the NIID Centre of Emergency Preparedness and Response, was quoted as saying in a statement.
He explained that the dominant strain in Japan, dubbed AY.29, is likely to have originated from the Delta variant which emerged in the country in May. Given that AY.29 is not endemic in other parts of the world while leading in Japan, it was not brought into the country by participants of the Games nor was it spread abroad by them, the scientist explained.
Given the low incidence rate among tens of thousands of participants of the Olympics - 464 infections, including 33 positive cases among 11,300 athletes, organizers managed to maintain the safety of the event for both participants and residents, the statement read.
The Tokyo Olympics, originally scheduled for 2020, were postponed for a year due to the coronavirus outbreak. When the event kicked off, several prefectures of Japan recorded surges in infections, with Tokyo alone hitting a new single-day record of over 5,000 cases, and imposed emergency and enhanced counter-coronavirus regimes.
