COVID-19: Tokyo Olympic organizers cancel culture festival

Tokyo : Organizers of the Tokyo Olympic Games announced here on Monday that all four cultural events of the Nippon Festival due to take place this year have been cancelled.

"Rearrangement of the Festival in 2021 is currently under consideration," it said, reports Xinhua news agency.

The festival, originally scheduled around late March to September 2020, is an official cultural program of Tokyo 2020, aiming to provide different opportunities for as many people as possible to take part in the Games.

The Tokyo Olympic Games has been postponed by one year due to the global spread of the coronavirus and will open on July 23, 2021.

Holding the Tokyo Olympics any time before a vaccine is found will be "very unrealistic," according to a leading global health expert.

Professor Devi Sridhar had said that the development of the vaccine will be key to when the Olympics can be held.

Sridhar, however, said that the vaccine could be found earlier than what was expected. "We're hearing from the scientists that this could be possible. I had thought it would be a year or a year and a half away but we're hearing possibly this could come sooner," she told BBC Sport.

"If we do get a vaccine within the next year then actually I think that (Olympics) is realistic. The vaccine will be the game-changer -- an effective, affordable, available vaccine.

"If we don't get a scientific breakthrough, then I think that looks very unrealistic."

Sridhar, however, said that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Tokyo 2020 organisers made the right decision in postponing the Games by a year.