South African soccer team outbreak tests Tokyo Olympics covid-safe strategy

TOKYO â€" An outbreak of infections among members of the South African men’s soccer team has emerged as the first test of Olympic officials’ strategy of aggressive testing and swift isolation to prevent the spread of coronavirus throughout the Tokyo Games.

Two dozen people on the South African soccer team, the vast majority of them athletes, are under individual quarantine after three members tested positive, Olympic officials announced Monday. They were the first athletes to test positive from inside the Olympic Village, where thousands players and staff reside and dine.

With just four days until the Opening Ceremonies, the incident underscored growing fears about whether the Games would end up a superspreader event. The rise of the delta variant around the world and coronavirus infections in Tokyo have raised concerns about the thousands of foreign visitors entering Japan.

Yet Olympic organizers have remained steadfast that their testing-and-quarantining regimen is effective. Officials say their approach is designed to ensure a “covid-safe,” not necessarily a “covid-free,” Games.

“There will be, of course, a certain number of positive case to be found in the lead-up to the Games. But once again, the most important thing is the response to the positive cases,” Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee Masa Takaya said in a news conference Monday.

Vaccines are not required of anyone entering Japan, but visitors and returning residents are required to have two negative covid results within 96 hours of departure and another negative result upon landing.

Every member of the soccer team followed those protocols, the team’s chief medical officer Phatho Zondi said in a news release. The three members tested positive as a part of regular daily screening from inside the Village two to three days after their arrival in Tokyo.

“The timing of the positive results suggests that the PCR test in these individuals was done during the incubation period of the infection, which is how they could be negative in South Africa and then positive in Japan,” Zondi said. “They are now in isolation where they will continue to be monitored and will not be allowed to train or have any physical contact with the rest of the squad.”

A fourth member of the South African delegation, a rugby coach, also tested positive Sunday.

Information about where the infected and exposed members traveled within the Village was not immediately available Monday.

Six athletes and two staff members of the British delegation are self-isolating after being exposed as close contacts of someone who tested positive upon arrival and was not a member of the delegation, the BBC reported.

Athletes are screened daily, and those who test positive or are exposed must quarantine in individual rooms, get meals delivered, ride transportation individually, and refrain from training or playing until they are cleared by medical staff.

The South African team is currently unable to practice ahead of its scheduled Thursday match against Japan. Takaya said Tokyo 2020 officials will discuss whether the match will take place.

Public support for the Olympics remains lukewarm, and some of the anxiety has seeped into some sponsorships. Toyota, a top sponsor of the Games, announced Monday it will not air any Olympic-related television advertisements in Japan and that its officials will no longer attend any of the events, including the Opening Ceremonies, according to media reports.

Japan has barred all spectators from Olympic events in and around Tokyo in an effort to curb the spread of the virus. Olympic officials noted that the opportunity for the residents of the Village and the general Japanese public to interact is “incredibly limited,” and that the Games would not pose a risk to the residents unaffiliated with the Olympics.

More than 22,000 athletes, Games personnel and journalists have entered Japan since July 1. So far, 61 people have tested positive for covid, and 28 of them were overseas arrivals â€" or one-tenth of 1 percent, Takaya noted.

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