Tokyo organizers securing hotel rooms for Olympians who test positive for COVID-19: report

Athletes and staff attending the upcoming Tokyo Summer Olympic Games who test positive for COVID-19 will be isolated in one of 300 hotel rooms procured by organizers near Athletes’ Village, a Japanese news agency reported.

In its coverage of the Kyodo report, Reuters notes that organizers spent several million dollars renting out an entire hotel for the purpose of isolating those who test positive, as well as dozens of vehicles that will be used to shuttle people to and from the building.

Under current plans, athletes and staff attending the Games will be tested for COVID-19 every four days.

Tokyo’s Summer Olympic Games, originally set to be held last year, are now scheduled to start in July. The event faces widespread opposition among the public in Japan, which is currently battling a resurgence of COVID-19 in the Osaka prefecture.

COVID-19 infections in that area forced organizers to cancel the Olympic torch relay set to be held through the city’s streets. Officials opted instead to hold events in the city’s largest public park.

“Medical systems [in Osaka] are on the verge of collapse,” the prefecture’s governor, Hirofumi Yoshimura said last week, according to The Associated Press, while blaming the surge on a new strain of the virus. “Obviously [the new strain] spreads more rapidly and it is more contagious.”