Japan is considering vaccinating about 70,000 volunteers for the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, while thousands of media members will be tracked by a global positioning system when they are under mandatory quarantine after entering the country to improve the safety of the event amid the coronavirus pandemic, officials said Tuesday.
Olympics minister Tamayo Marukawa said in response to parliamentary questioning that officials have already agreed to pursue the idea of vaccinating all volunteers who registered through the Tokyo Games organizing committee to assist at venues and at the athletes' village.
She disclosed the plan at a time when Japan still lags behind other developed countries with its vaccine rollout, with the large majority of people in the country yet to be vaccinated with less than 50 days until the opening of the Olympics.