Seventeen more people linked to the Tokyo Olympics have tested positive for COVID-19, including one athlete, bringing the total since the beginning of this month to 123, Games organizers said Saturday.
The total includes 14 contractors and two Games officials, one of whom had been staying at the Olympics Village, they said a day after the Games, delayed for one year due to the coronavirus pandemic, officially started.
The athlete is non-Japanese but had not been residing in the village, according to the organizing body of the Games. The data, compiled by the committee, go back to July 1 and do not include athletes and staff who tested positive at pre-games training camps in Japan.
The organizers have vowed to stage a safe and secure Olympics and Paralympics, with quarantine rules and testing to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
But positive results have continued to trickle in daily, amid concern over whether COVID-19 countermeasures are being properly followed.
Some athletes marching in the opening ceremony at the National Stadium on Friday did not wear masks in violation of the Olympics “playbook,” including most members of the Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan delegations.
Christophe Dubi, the International Olympic Committee’s executive director of the games, said the organizers will be on the lookout for egregious rule breakers.
“Every time we see someone without a mask, and that happens a little bit everywhere, it’s our duty, all of us, to say, ‘Reminder, mask please.’ And in most of the cases, people do simply forget,” he said at a news conference Saturday. “If you have blatant behaviors that are absolutely unbearable, we will definitely take action.”
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