The Tokyo Organizing Committee has agreed to relaxes COVID requirements for Indian contingent.
The Indian contingent, which will be going to Japan for the Tokyo Olympics have been given some form of respite from the Organizing Committee as they have decided to reduce the restrictions to relaxes COVID requirements for Indian.
Now let’s have look at some of them:
1. Criteria for RT-PCR test reports
The Indian players are only supposed to produce negative RT-PCR test report just 96 and 72 hours before they leave the country for the Olympics village, as has been reported by Dr. Prem Verma in a recent interview with the Times of India.
The two negative reports should come from the appointed diagnostics centers, which are recommended by the Organizing Committee (OC), according to the Tokyo 2020 playbook. These are associated with the Embassy of Japan in India. The negative reports of the players should be uploaded in a proper format.
The players and the supporting staff don’t have to report a status of their test on the health monitoring app, which is approved by the OC everyday. The players can get themselves tested at the centers which have been approved by Indian Olympic Association (IOA) or at the regional centers of Sports Authority of India (SAI).
2. Approval for the labs
The application for the approval of these labs has been sent to the OC on Wednesday. It is not necessary for players to have their negative RT-PCR test reports even 48 hours before them leaving the country but Dr. Verma had requested the players to keep a physical record with themselves.
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During a recent interview Dr. Verma explained, “Initially, it was mandatory that 14 days before they leave the country for Tokyo, the players had to update their daily health records on the app. But now, that had been reduced to 7 days. So, this means, that they would be monitoring their health for 14 days but would be updating data for 7 days. After a player uploads the details, that will reach the immigration office and then a QR code would come on the player’s phone. That code would be scanned at the immigration when that player reaches the airport.”
3. Number of labs
Dr. Verma said that there are 13 private labs across the country which have been identified and notified by the OC for the compulsory 96 and 72 hours of COVID testing. These labs are associated with the National Health Authority (NHA) and are also government recognized. Dr. Prem Verma is also the COVID Liasion Officer of the Indian team in the Olympics. He also revealed that he had sent a mail to the OC to get approval for more labs for states such as Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad etc.
What were the Japanese government’s COVID control measures?
The measures were quite strict before. The Organizing Committee had spotted 11 countries, including India, whose players, coaches and support staff were supposed to undergo strict isolation period of 3 days at the Games village and apart from that they were supposed to get tested one week before they left the country and they were also not allowed to physically meet with players from different countries for at least three days.