Olympic Official: “The IOC is not going to send you into a pandemic situation”

The 2020 Summer Olympic Games are currently scheduled to kick off on July 24th, 2020. IOC photo.

With new cases of coronavirus popping up around the world, the International Olympic Committee is under pressure to take a firm position on the 2020 Summer Games' viability in the face of what may become a global pandemic. Unfortunately, there has been no definitive answer on whether or not the Games will run.

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Dick Pound, the IOC's longest-serving member, said that the final decision on whether to hold the Games may not be made until late May, according to the Associated Press. In the meantime, he encouraged athletes to continue training as usual, but conceded that "the IOC is not going to send [athletes] into a pandemic situation." He noted that it's far more likely that the Games would be cancelled entirely instead of postponed or rescheduled, saying "You just don’t postpone something on the size and scale of the Olympics. There’s so many moving parts, so many countries and different seasons, and competitive seasons, and television seasons. You can’t just say, `We’ll do it in October.'"