WHO Advisory Proved Right; Pandemic Kept at Bay in Tokyo Olympics by Following Simple Measures

The recently conducted Tokyo Olympics brought home 7 medals, one of which is gold by ace javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra was successful in keeping the spread of the coronavirus at bay. Thanks to the advisory and guidelines by WHO and other important task forces and scientific experts from around the world who helped achieve this feat easily. The timely measures taken by the authorities did not let either the contestant be affected or spread the virus in any form.

The Olympics committee praised WHO and said, “Since the beginning of the pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) has emphasized that the way out of the pandemic is through applying public health and social measures, such as social distancing, wearing masks, and hand hygiene”. A total of 651,296 tests were done by the Tokyo Olympics authorities between July 1 and August 7 and another 42,711 tests were conducted on the airport itself by the local authorities.

Praising how well they handled the pandemic situation, independent panel board head of the Olympics Brian McCloskey said, “What Tokyo 2020 has just done in a historic way is show that the WHO advice is right. By following basic public health measures, and by layering a testing programme on top, we have shown that it is possible to keep a pandemic at bay”. He further added, “Backing this up by an effective and comprehensive test, track and trace programme. This has been the view of the WHO since the beginning”. Hope other sports authorities also learn from this.