Two South African soccer players have become the first athletes inside the Olympic Village to test positive for COVID-19.
TOKYO — Two South African soccer players became the first athletes inside the Olympic Village to test positive for COVID-19, and other cases connected to the Tokyo Games were also confirmed Sunday, highlighting the herculean task organizers face to keep the virus contained while the world’s biggest sports event plays out. The positive tests came as some of the 11,000 athletes and thousands more team officials expected from across the globe began arriving, having traveled through a pandemic to get to Tokyo. They’ll all now live in close quarters in the Olympic Village on Tokyo Bay over the next three weeks. International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach said last week there was “zero” risk of athletes passing on the virus to Japanese or other residents of the village. But that bold statement was already being tested. The Olympics, which were postponed for a year because of the pandemic, are set to officially open on Friday and run until Aug.8. The two soccer players and a team video analyst who also tested positive had been moved to “the Tokyo 2020 isolation facility,” the South African Olympic committee said. The rest of the squad members and officials had also been quarantined. Those positive tests further stoked local fears, with the South African team scheduled to play against host nation Japan in its first game on Thursday. There has already been consistent opposition from the Japanese public to holding the Olympics during the pandemic, with fears that it could become a super-spreader event and cause a spike in infections among Japanese people. Bach and the IOC have insisted it will be safe and have forged ahead against most medical advice. The IOC says it sees the Games as a chance to foster international solidarity during difficult times, but the IOC would also lose billions of dollars in broadcast rights if the Games were to be canceled completely. Also Sunday, Team South Africa confirmed the coach of its rugby sevens team also tested positive at a pre-Olympics training camp in the southern Japanese city of Kagoshima. He was also in isolation there and would miss the entire rugby competition, the team said. And there were other Olympics-related positive tests. Olympic organizers said that another athlete had tested positive, although they were not residing in the Olympic Village. The athlete was not named and only identified as “non-Japanese.
