China offers to supply Covid vaccines for Tokyo olympians

China has also offered to supply vaccines for all participants at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Thursday said that China has offered to supply Covid-19 vaccines for the participants of the Tokyo Olympics.

IOC president Thomas Bach said the “kind offer” to provide coronavirus vaccines was made by China’s Olympic Committee to cover olympians from all countries both for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, scheduled for July 2021, as well as for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics.

“The Chinese Olympic Committee is ready in cooperation with the IOC to make these additional doses available... either via collaboration with international partners or directly in countries where agreements regarding Chinese vaccines are in place,” he said.

Mr Bach, who was elected for a second term heading the Olympic body on Thursday, didn’t provide any details on the number of doses. Usually, the Olympics involves the participation of thousands of athletes, staff, media, volunteers and officials.

The IOC has already urged the national Olympic committees to vaccinate athletes, and Mr Bach said that the IOC “will pay for the additional doses of vaccines not only for Olympic but also Paralympic teams.”

“For each of these doses, the IOC will pay for two doses more which can be made available to the population in the respective countries,” he said.

The 2020 Tokyo Olympics were postponed last year because of the pandemic –the first Olympics to be called off outside wartime. The Games are now scheduled for 23 July to 8 August, although concerns about coronavirus caseloads have not gone away.

Amid mounting domestic pressure, Japan has already reportedly decided not to allow international spectators at the Olympics.

Since January 2020, Japan has recorded over 441,000 cases of Covid-19 including at least 8,300 deaths, according to World Health Organisation data.

The East Asian nation started rolling out its vaccination programme in mid-February 2021 – several weeks after many other nations – using the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, but it has been marred by a supply shortage.

Local media report that the pace of vaccination has been slow so far with only about 50,000 doses administered, while negotiations are ongoing for better supply and other vaccine candidates.

Vaccines developed by AstraZeneca-University of Oxford and the US pharmaceutical giant Moderna are waiting for approval.

According to a report by The Japan Times, for its population of about 126 million Japan has secured rights for at least 564 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines.

On Sunday, Japan’s health minister Norihisa Tamura stated that they could approve a second Covid-19 vaccine by May.

Additional reporting by agencies