Tokyo 2020: Vaccine Will Be Ready - Organiser

By Sampson Adedeji The International  Olympic  Committee is certain that the Olympic Games will continue next year, as the organization takes into account four different models, from the worst-case scenario where the virus is still raging everywhere to the best normalized scenario, BSNSports.com.ng reports. In a webinar with all national Olympic committees, the IOC focused on the idea that there will still be local clusters and that distance will remain the norm, but also that a vaccine will be on the market that will vaccinate all Olympic athletes for the start of Tokyo 2021. "We can say that enough vaccines will be available by the first trimester of 2021,"  The IOC is in talks with the World Health Organization (WHO) about obtaining those vaccines for athletes, coaches and counselors. According to IOC chief physician Johan Bellemans confirms the information: “Five large pharmaceutical companies are ready with their vaccine and are expecting approval to bring them on the market in the last quarter of this year. The protection threshold for that approval has been set relatively low at 50 percent: the vaccine must protect in half of the cases. Most vaccines will easily reach that threshold. By the way, they are already rolling off the line." "The demand for those vaccines will be high," says Bellemans. “And the weak population has priority. But the IOC may reserve a bulk of 100,000 vaccines for the Olympic bubble with all athletes, coaches and staff.