Olympics were supposed to be in 2020. Tokyo’s covid protocols are still there.

And when his symbolic moment came atop of the podium, he beamed with the pride of a nation as he waited for his prize. The medal was presented to him on a tray like an airplane lunch.

Unlike nearly every Olympian that has ever come before him, Takato was asked to put his antiseptic-sprayed medal around his own neck to comply with the Games’ all-encompassing Covid-19 protocols.

“It’s heavy," he said. “It reminds me of Rio’s medal, but Rio’s medal was kind of excessively heavy."

According to the reasoning of the Tokyo organizers, it might have also been crawling with microbes—never mind that the risk of surface Covid transmission is minuscule. But the do-it-yourself medal ceremony is just one of the dozens of strict mitigation measures imposed at these Games that now seem outdated through better understanding of the virus’s behavior and widespread vaccination among the tens of thousands of people in attendance.

The Tokyo Olympics were supposed to be in 2020. Based on their pandemic protocols, organizers are behaving as if that’s still the case. Dining rooms are filled with plexiglass partitions. Microphones are sanitized between questions at news conferences. Even athletes supporting other athletes are advised, “Clap, do not sing or chant."

“We know now that this virus is primarily a respiratory virus," said Deborah Roy, president of the American Society of Safety Professionals. “Washing your hands and cleaning surfaces is still a good idea…but in a rational way, not in an obsessed way."

The scene in Tokyo is jarring because of how much progress has been made on the science of Covid transmission in many parts of the world since the spring of 2020 when Japan made the easy decision to postpone the Games for a year. Safe and effective vaccines not only exist but are also widely available to athletes, if not the general population. Transmission by airborne particles is widely accepted.

And most of all, the people tasked with figuring out how to play sports as safely as possible during a pandemic now have a far better idea how to do just that.

This time last summer, for instance, the NBA was in a bubble, the Premier League was disinfecting soccer balls, and the Denver Broncos had players walk through a mist that claimed to kill microbes by forming millions of nano-crystalline structures. Approaches were mix-and-match, based on whichever researcher a team or league happened to be consulting.

“There was so much unknown, and we had to rely on expert opinion," said Dr. Allen Sills, the NFL’s chief medical officer. “This year we have much more objective data."

Fast-forward a year, and for vaccinated athletes—which make up 80% of the total pool, according to the IOC—some of these measures might feel as ancient as competing in the Olympics nude.

The best way to prevent outbreaks at the Olympics is to be vigilant and strict with well-known, science-backed mitigation measures, like vaccines, masking, testing, social distancing and quarantines, said Theodora Hatziioannou, a Rockefeller University virologist who is studying Covid-19 immunity.

The organizers require frequent testing and are limiting the number of people at venues. But athletes are flying in just days before the Games begin, sometimes after being in settings that could be primed for transmission—like in stadiums with tens of thousands of people or in communities where case counts are high but vaccination rates are low. Vaccination was not required to come to the Games.

With more than 10,000 athletes and their teams heading for Japan, where vaccination rates remain low, Tokyo organizers spent the past year ramping up their spending to add Covid countermeasures that are as obsolete as wooden tennis rackets.

Plexiglas or plastic screens, which were popular last year to combat the then-novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, which scientists did not yet understand, became a thing of the past in many settings as researchers gained more knowledge about its transmission. Yet those exact dividers are dividing much of Tokyo right now inside the official Olympic venues where they’re installed on desks, dining tables, bus seats and more.

While those partitions can protect cashiers and receptionists who come in close contact with potentially hundreds of people daily, they do little to protect office workers or restaurant patrons from aerosol transmission, said Joseph Allen, the director of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Healthy Buildings Program.

“It could actually make your ventilation system less effective," he said. “As you put up new barriers, you change the airflow of the ventilation system," which was designed with a specific layout in mind.

A better strategy would be investing in more improving ventilation and air filtration, he and others said.

Plexiglas is far from the only measure that can give a visual indication that safety measures have been implemented without actually increasing everyone’s safety significantly. Surfaces like desks are sanitized constantly. Before entering venues, attendees are asked to spray their hands via toe-tap operated bottles of hand sanitizer. Visitors are also greeted with a sign that tells them not to high-five. But fomite transmission, or getting Covid through indirect contact with a contaminated surface, is not all that common, research now shows.

Those are combined with opaque rules governing entry into the country that don’t take into account vaccination status. Visiting staff and media may only travel between their hotels and competition venues for their first 14 days in Japan. Some are subject to even stricter hotel-room quarantine, with enforcement via a mandatory tracking app.

Yet those same visitors are also asked to pile onto buses and cram into crowded workspaces. Some attendees do not wear their masks correctly, over their nose and mouth, which defeats the purpose.

That didn’t prevent the first cases of the virus from being detected in the athletes’ accommodations last week. Two Olympians tested positive and were moved straight into 14-day isolation.

“We are assured that every effort will be made to ensure security at the Olympic Village," the Games’ general manager Toshiro Muto said. “What is important is to react immediately and to ensure that all athletes are protected and safe."

This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text