OSAKA – Osaka Gov. Hirofumi Yoshimura said Saturday he wants the cardboard beds athletes slept on at the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics to be made available for COVID-19 patients.
The recyclable beds from the athletes village in Tokyo are likely to be used at a temporary medical facility to be set up by the prefecture by the end of this month.
“Those beds were for Olympians and they are high quality,” Yoshimura told reporters.
About 800 of the beds, which were designed to support people up to 200 kilograms in weight, and pillows used during the Tokyo Games are expected to be transferred to the medical facility for COVID-19 patients with minor or no symptoms.
The provider of the bedding products, Airweave Inc., has told the prefecture it is willing to donate the beds to the facility, which is to be built at a big exhibition center.
Around 18,000 cardboard beds were used at the athletes’ village during the Olympics and Paralympics, which closed last Sunday having been delayed for one year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Prior to the Games, viral tweets and news articles about the Olympic Village’s “anti-sex beds,” a rumor that proved to be false, began to spread shortly before the start of the Tokyo Games
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