Last month, the IOC and Japan’s organizers agreed to postpone the games, until July 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet on Wednesday, Japan’s Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, told the parliament that the Olympics will not happen, unless the coronavirus pandemic is contained by then.
His words came a day, after the president of the Japan Medical Association said, it would be difficult to run the rescheduled games without the emergence of an effective vaccine.
However, in the latest response, the IOC has played down suggestions about the vaccine, as John Coates, a senior member of the organization, insisted that the games going ahead were not reliant on the development of a vaccine in the next 15 months.
Japan and the IOC have also clashed over who will shoulder the additional costs of postponing the games, something which is estimated to be at least 3 billion dollars.
