With just over 10 months before the scheduled Opening Ceremonies on July 23, 2021, Muto said it would be “too optimistic to assume that the issue of the coronavirus will be a thing of the past” by next summer.

Plans for the Games appear to be developing along parallel tracks. The government says it has a deal with U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner BioN­Tech to secure 120 million doses of its vaccine for 60 million people by June next year if clinical trials are successful.

It has agreed to buy 120 million doses of a separate vaccine from British drugmaker AstraZeneca next year, with 30 million doses to be supplied by March, the Health Ministry said.

The aim is to “ensure that the vaccine will be provided to the entire nation during the first half of 2021,” Shoji Watanabe, the head of coronavirus control in the Cabinet Secretariat, said at a news conference Tuesday.

Although Watanabe did not link the midyear …continued .
[Source: Washington Post]