Medical Association Urges Tokyo Olympics To Be Canceled Concerning The Slow COVID-19 Vaccination Process

Illustration of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. (Wikimedia Commons / Tokyo-Good)

JAKARTA - Medical organizations in Japan are pressing for the cancellation of the Tokyo Olympics, along with the spike in positive cases of COVID-19 and the low number of COVID-19 vaccinations among the medical community.

The number of Japanese medical personnel in major cities who have received the COVID-19 vaccine is less than 30 percent. The Tokyo Olympics are less than 65 days away.

Cabinet figures released this week show, three months after Japan's COVID-19 vaccination push, less than 40 percent of all medical workers in the country are fully inoculated.

The problem is particularly so in the Olympic host city of Tokyo and other large population centers, where the rate of fully vaccinated medical workers is less than 30 percent.

"Most of the COVID-19 vaccine supplies are concentrated in major hospitals, and there are problems in the reservation system for medical staff", the paper said.

One of the complaints from groups opposed to organizing the Tokyo Olympics is the delay in launching a vaccine campaign for the medical community.

On Monday, the Tokyo Medical Practitioners Association, which oversees about 6 thousand doctors in the city, supported calls to cancel the Tokyo Olympics.

This call was in line with the spike in COVID-19 cases which caused hospitals to be overwhelmed, while all medical personnel was deployed to deal with the existing situation.

"We strongly ask the authorities to convince the IOC [International Olympic Committee] that organizing the Olympics is difficult and get its decision to cancel the Olympics", the association said in an open May 14 letter to Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga posted to its website on Monday, cited from The National News.

Japanese health experts and other medical groups have raised their concerns about the Olympics, while an online petition calling for its cancellation was signed by hundreds of thousands of people.

To note, the number of COVID-19 cases nationwide in Japan fell to 3.680 on Monday, the lowest level since April 26, according to NHK. However, the number of severe infections hit a record high of 1.235, the health ministry said on Tuesday.