MOSCOW, April 29. /TASS/. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) will lose several hundred million US dollars due to the postponement of the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Japan for one year over the ongoing global spread of the novel coronavirus, IOC President Thomas Bach said on Wednesday.The 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo were scheduled to be held between July 24 and August 9, and the 2020 Summer Paralympic Games were slated for August 25-September 6. The IOC and the IPC (the International Paralympic Committee) announced their decision on March 24 to postpone for one year the tournaments in Japan due to the continuous COVID-19 spread.Yoshiro Mori, the head of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics Organizing Committee, announced on March 30 that the Summer Olympic Games in Japan are due next year on July 23 and the Summer Paralympic Games on August 24.”For our part, we have made it clear that the IOC will continue to be responsible for its share of the operational burden and its share of the costs for these postponed Games, under the terms of the existing agreement for 2020 that we have with our Japanese partners and friends,” Bach said in a statement posted on the official IOC website on Wednesday.”Although it is too early to give an exact figure, we already know that we have to shoulder several hundred million US dollars of postponement costs,” the IOC president said. “This is why we also need to look into and review all the services that we provide for these postponed Games.””With regard to supporting the Olympic community that is affected by this crisis, we are already in fruitful discussions with the athletes, the NOCs [National Olympic Committees] and the Ifs [International Sports Federations], as well as our commercial partners and sponsors,” Bach continued.”As immediate measures, we have already extended all Olympic grants to the NOCs to cover their preparations for the Games,” the IOC chief added.In late December 2019, Chinese officials notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus — named COVID-19 by the WHO — have been reported in every corner of the globe, including Russia.On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. According to the latest statistics, over 3,100,000 people have been infected worldwide and more than 218,400 deaths have been reported. In addition, so far, over 964,300 individuals have recovered from the illness across the globe.To date, a total of 99,399 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Russia, with 10,286 patients having recovered from the virus. Russia’s latest data indicates 972 fatalities nationwide. Earlier, the Russian government set up an Internet hotline to keep the public updated on the coronavirus situation.
