80% Of Czech Olympic Team Vaccinated

The Czech team at the Olympic Games in Tokyo is in terms of coronavirus vaccination, similar to the Americans, who have the largest team at the games. The Czechs have four positively tested athletes on covid-19 in the venue, the Americans two.

The Czech team has 115 athletes in Tokyo and approximately 260 members, accompanied. “And more than eighty percent of them are vaccinated,” Tibor Alföldi, the director of communication at the WWTP, repeated for ČTK, stating that he knows the exact list of vaccinated WWTPs, but is subject to medical secrecy.

According to the AP, there are 613 American athletes in Japan, of which 567 filled out a medical questionnaire before the trip and 83 percent of them stated that they had been vaccinated.

However, vaccination is not a condition for participation in the Olympic Games, so each of the athletes and members of the teams undergoes daily testing. Before the opening ceremony, the Czech team revealed six positive cases and all from a joint charter flight.

Beach volleyball player Markéta Nausch Sluková, road cyclist Michal Schlegel and table tennis player Pavel Širuček lost their start at the games. Beach volleyball player Ondřej Perušič still has a chance to start. All of them were transported to Japan by the aforementioned special and the beach volleyball coach Simon Nausch also had a positive test, and the tennis player Vlastimil Voráček was the first to arrive immediately after their arrival.

From the American team, beach volleyball player Taylor Crabb and gymnasts’ substitute Kara Eaker had positive tests. Just before leaving for the Games, 17-year-old tennis player Coco Gauff and Katie Lou Samuelson also had a positive result, as she lost the Olympic premiere of 3×3 basketball.

Representatives of the WWTP state that their entire staff, which takes care of the expedition, is vaccinated. Vaccination was recommended to athletes and implementation teams by the WWTP medical commission. The Olympic Committee also arranged for vaccination at a military hospital in Prague and asked for a reduction in the time between two doses. However, vaccine deliveries were delayed and not all athletes wanted to take risks in June before the Olympics.

The fact that Dr. Voráček was not vaccinated and was the first to be positive aroused speculation that everyone vaccinated should go to the Olympics. However, it will not protect the vaccination one hundred percent, as the example of the beach volleyball player Perušič showed, who is vaccinated and yet had a positive test.

According to the rules of the pre-trip games, everyone had to undergo two PCR tests, no later than 96 hours and 72 hours before departure, in each country only in laboratories approved by the Japanese side. However, the case of Petr Graclík, Secretary General of the WWTP, showed that this may not be enough. Graclík stated in an interview for Deník N that he had negative PCR tests, but on the day of departure he was not well, he did an antigen test at home and it turned out to be positive. That’s why he canceled his trip at the last minute.

The International Olympic Committee said an estimated 85 percent of people in the Olympic Village are vaccinated. It is based on data from individual Olympic committees.