Preparations for the Tokyo Summer Olympics are continuing as scheduled, with all athletes allowed to choose whether to participate due to the threat posed by COVID-19.
Sun Lih-chyun (孫立群), a consultant with the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee, said that preparations are still under way for the nation’s delegation, because there has been no official statement about the Olympics being delayed or canceled.
However, athletes would have to decide for themselves if they want to participate in the event and would not be pressured, he said.
Sun made the remark after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Thursday held a teleconference with Asia’s 45 national Olympic committees.
IOC president Thomas Bach said in the meeting that a responsible attitude toward disease prevention would be adopted, taking athlete safety as its core consideration.
The IOC would work with the WHO and the Tokyo Games organizing committee, as well as the governments of Tokyo and Japan, to monitor and curb the spread of the coronavirus, he said.
Bach has also spoken by telephone with 220 athlete representatives worldwide to emphasize that the well-being of athletes is the primary consideration and that financial reasons are not the motivation to go ahead with the Olympics.
As the coronavirus continues to wreak havoc worldwide, with entire cities locked down and major sporting events canceled, there has been increasing pressure on Tokyo Games organizers and a growing number of athletes have expressed concerns about plans to go ahead with the Olympics.
The Nikkei Asian Review yesterday reported that Japanese Olympic Committee board member Kaori Yamaguchi has raised concerns and called for the event to be postponed.
Yamaguchi, a judo bronze medalist at the 1988 Seoul Games, was quoted as saying that the IOC is putting athletes at risk by asking them to train as usual during the coronavirus pandemic.
On Tuesday, Spanish Olympic Committee president Alejandro Blanco said in a statement that his country’s athletes would be at a disadvantage if the Olympics are not postponed due to the seriousness of the coronavirus outbreak in Spain.
Spain has the second-most coronavirus infections in Europe — after Italy — with 18,077 confirmed as of Friday and more than 10,000 new infections recorded from Monday to Thursday, WHO data showed.
Spain has had a total of 831 deaths from the disease, the data showed.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
RSS