Tokyo (CNN) Thousands of volunteers have pulled out of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics in recent weeks, organizers said, fueling concerns Japan may not be ready to host the rescheduled Games as the country struggles to rein in a new wave of Covid-19 cases.
About 10,000 of the 80,000 registered volunteers supporting athletic events had quit as of Wednesday, according to Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee officials.
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Can you blame them? The athletes will be vaccinated, but the volunteers — who have to take public transit to and from the venues — will still be unvaccinated, because so far, Japan has only given vaccines to medical professionals and the elderly.
Japan has a lot of vaccines — they just don’t have enough people to administer them because they don’t have enough doctors, nurses, and dentists, who are the only people legally allowed to give the vaccine.
Short of cancelling the games altogether (which the IOC and Japan says isn’t an option) the only thing they can do is widen the pool of approved administers of the vaccine, but that would’ve needed to be put into motion months ago. I hope this doesn’t turn into a disaster.
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