Day: July 25, 2021

TOKYO – Chase Kalisz got things rolling, claiming the first U.S. gold at the Olympic pool.
By the time the morning was done, the powerhouse team had a whole bunch of medals.
Six of them in all, quite a start Sunday for the Americans in the post-Michael Phelps era.
“I’m happy to be here and kick the U.S. off,” said Kalisz, who won the 400-meter individual medley.
There was room for others to shine, as well.
Host Japan won a swimming gold, Tunisia claimed a surprising spot atop the medal podium, and the mighty Australian women set the first world record of the competition in the 4×100 freestyle relay.
The Americans certainly had no complaints about their opening-day performance. In Phelps’ record-setting career, which encompassed five Summer Games, they never won six medals in the first session of finals.
“A pretty good start for the U.S.,” said Kieran Smith, who in his first major international meet snagged a bronze in the men’s 400 freestyle. “We executed today. I’m really proud of us.”
The Aussies, who hope to challenge America’s dominance in the pool, picked up three medals Sunday.
The free relay was never in doubt, not with a dynamic quartet that included sisters Bronte and Cate Campbell swimming the leadoff and anchor legs, respectively, joined by Meg Harris and Emma McKeon.
McKeon blew away the field on the third leg and Cate Campbell touched in 3 minutes, 29.69 seconds. At the medal ceremony, the sisters touchingly draped their medals around each other’s neck.
The silver went to Canada in 3:32.78, while the Americans capped their morning with one more medal to surpass their best first-day haul from the Phelps era (five in both 2004 and 2008).
With Simone Manuel anchoring the relay, they touched just behind their rivals to the north in 3:32.81.
Kalisz was the first U.S. medal winner of the Tokyo Games, and Jay Litherland — who was born in Osaka — made it a 1-2 finish for the Americans by rallying on the freestyle leg to claim the silver. Brendon Smith of Australia earned the bronze.
In the 400 free, 18-year-old Tunisian Ahmed Hafnaoui was the stunning winner from lane eight, his victory punctuated with loud screams that could be heard throughout the largely empty arena.
“I was surprised with myself,” said Hafnaoui, who joined Ous Mellouli as a gold medalist from the north African country. “I couldn’t believe it until I touched the wall and saw the 1 (on the scoreboard).”
Hafnaoui finished in 3:43.26, followed by Australia’s Jack McLoughlin and Kieran Smith. The top three were separated by less than a second after eight laps of the pool.
The U.S. women did their part, too.
Japan’s Yui Ohashi won gold in the women’s 400 IM with an electric breaststroke leg, but two Americans were right in her wake. Emma Weyant earned the silver, while the bronze went to Hali Flickinger.
“After we saw (Kalisz and Litherland go 1-2), we kind of looked at each other and said, ‘It’s our turn,’” Weyant said. “I think that really got our team going.”

Kalisz, a protégé and former training partner of Phelps, touched first in 4:09.42. Litherland was next in 4:10.28, just one-10th of a second ahead of Brendon Smith.
Kalisz flexed his muscles and then climbed atop the lane rope, splashing the water while a contingent of his teammates cheered him from the stands at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre.
“U-S-A! U-S-A!” they chanted.
Kalisz was the silver medalist in the grueling event at the Rio Games five years ago. Now, at age 27, he’s the best in the world at using all four strokes.
“That one was the most special type of pain,” Kalisz said. “I had vowed that I was going to make that hurt as much as possible and give my absolute best to accomplish this.”
Litherland came over to give the winner a hug, having ensured the Americans got off to the best possible start at the pool.
“To come back and do this with Chase means a lot,” said Litherland, who finished fifth in the 400 IM at Rio.
After putting on their medals during a masked-up victory ceremony, Kalisz and Litherland walked around the deck arm-in-arm.
No social distancing for them.
The Americans seized their chance after Japanese star Daiya Seto stunningly failed to advance to the final, having finished ninth in the preliminaries after making a tactical error attempting to save his energy for the medal race.
The finals were held in the morning Tokyo time rather than their usual evening slot, a nod to U.S. television network NBC, which wanted to show the finals live in prime time back in America.
That was the same format used at the 2008 Beijing Games, where Phelps won a record eight gold medals. He retired after Rio, having captured 23 gold medals overall, but the Americans still have plenty of star power for the post-Phelps era.
Ohashi helped to make up for Seto’s flop in the men’s IM. She pulled away in the breast to win in 4:32.08.
Weyant gave chase in the freestyle leg but settled for silver in 4:32.76. Flickinger was third in 4:34.90, while Hungarian great Katinka Hosszu, the defending champion, faded to fifth.
The only people in the stands of the 15,000-seat arena were media, VIPs, officials and swimmers who weren’t competing Sunday. It was an eerily quiet atmosphere at times, though many ignored requests by Japanese organizers to refrain for any sort of cheering to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.
There was a drum in the stands, as well as a few horns to spice things up.
In a striking touch before the first race, the loudspeakers blared the song Pompeii by the British band Bastille, which includes the lyrics, “But if you close your eyes, does it almost feel like nothing changed at all?”
In the pool, it was business as usual. But it certainly felt like plenty had changed in an Olympics that were delayed a year by a worldwide pandemic and are finally being staged under tight restrictions that included a ban on all fans.
The Americans had no complaints.
Even with Phelps looking down from a broadcast seat, they are off to a dynamic start at the Olympic pool.

Source: Voice of America

GENEVA – On this first World Drowning Prevention Day, the World Health Organization offers life-saving solutions to prevent most of the 236,000 estimated deaths from drowning every year. The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution in April establishing this international day to raise awareness of drowning as a serious problem.
Summertime has been celebrated in song as the season when the living is easy. On a less celebratory note, summertime in the northern hemisphere also is the peak season for deaths by drowning.
Over the past decade, the World Health Organization reports 2.5 million people have died in drowning incidents. It says more than half of all drowning deaths are among people under age 30, with the highest rates among children under the age of five.
David Meddings, a WHO medical officer, said drowning is the second leading cause of death among children and youth under age 19 in wealthy countries such as the United States, Switzerland, and France. He notes, though, drowning disproportionately affects the poor and the marginalized.
“The rates for drowning in low- and middle-income countries are three times higher than the rates we observe in higher-income countries. And so, it is really the populations with the least resources to be able to adapt to the threats around them that are at highest risk for drowning. The Western Pacific region has the world’s highest drowning rates followed by the African region,” he said.
WHO reports more than 90% of drowning deaths occur in rivers, lakes, wells, irrigation canals and even domestic water storage vessels in the poorer countries. It says children and adolescents in rural areas are disproportionately affected.
Meddings said national surveys in Africa show most drownings occur among young adult men out on fishing vessels.
“For example, there was a study done in Tanzania among lakeside communities that show that the risk of death from drowning exceeded the risk of death in that population for death from HIV, TB or malaria. So, 80% of deaths occurring in young adult men who are in a sense obligated to go out on fishing vessels that often are inherently unsafe watercraft without advance weather warning and without knowing how to swim,” he said.
The report does not include statistics on flood-related mortality, deaths due to water transport mishaps such as capsized ferry boats, or migrant deaths that occur while crossing the perilous Mediterranean Sea.
WHO recommends a number of cost-effective life-saving measures. It says children should be taught basic swimming and water safety skills, wells and potentially dangerous water areas should be fenced off, and bystanders should be trained in safe rescue and resuscitation. It says safe boating and ferry regulations should be enforced and calls for flood risk management to be improved.

Source: Voice of America

HARARE – Zimbabwe on Sunday received one million SINOVAC vaccines it bought from China as the African country battles to meet the demand for the COVID-19 jabs. Zimbabweans want to get vaccinated to beat a third wave facing the country.
After the arrival of the doses from China on Sunday, Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube told reporters that Zimbabwe had paid $92 million for 12 million jabs from China and from the COVAX – the United Nations’ vaccine-sharing initiative.

“So, our vaccination program and vaccine acquisition program is going very well. For the first dose, we are already reaching about 50,000 vaccinations per day, which is good going indeed. So, all is going well. And we feel that we are well on our way of achieving that target of herd immunity which we need in order to open our economy safely so that the recovery is sustained and we can move from strength to strength with our objectives,” said Ncube.
In a virtual press conference this week Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization’s regional director for Africa, said the continent was going through a third wave of COVID-19 infections and should urgently ramp up COVID-19 vaccination program.
“Africa continues to lag behind, sadly. Yet Africa’s supply crunch is starting to ease. The first delivery of doses donated by the USA through the COVAX Facility are arriving in Africa and altogether nearly 60 million doses are expected in the coming weeks through COVAX from Team Europe, UK, purchased doses and other partners. African countries must go all out and speed up their vaccine rollouts by five to six times if they are to get all these doses into arms and fully vaccinate the most vulnerable 10% of their people by the end of September,” said Moeti.
COVID-19 is the disease caused by the coronavirus.
Slightly more than 1,400,000 Zimbabweans out of a population of 14 million have received their first shot, and nearly 680,000 have received their second inoculation since the program started in February.
Norman Murwizi is one of the Zimbabweans who has yet to get a vaccine due to shortages.
“The chances of me getting vaccinated would have increased due to increase supply of vaccines. My guess or wish will be – the service rate will actually have improved so that the number (of people to vaccinated) will plummet and the chances of people getting vaccinated does increase. So, the expectation increases of me getting a vaccine with no hassle at all. Or with minimum farce,” said Murwizi.
Zimbabwe had turned down Johnson & Johnson vaccines which the African Union sourced for its members with financing from the African Development Bank but changed its mind.
Zimbabwe has 97,277 confirmed coronavirus infections and 3,050 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University, which is tracking the global outbreak. On Sunday, Dr. John Mangwiro, Zimbabwe’s junior health minister, said with the arrival of a million jabs, the vaccination program would intensify.

Source: Voice of America

TOKYO – Staging an Olympics during the worst pandemic in a century? There’s a widespread perception that it couldn’t happen in a better place than Japan.
A vibrant, open democracy with deep pockets, the host nation is known for its diligent execution of detail-laden, large-scale projects, its technological advances, its consensus-building and world-class infrastructure. All this, on paper, at least, gives the strong impression that Japan is one of the few places in the world that could even consider pulling off the high-stakes tightrope walk that the Tokyo Games represent.
Some in Japan aren’t buying it.
“No country should hold an Olympics during a pandemic to start with. And if you absolutely must, then a more authoritarian and high-tech China or Singapore would probably be able to control COVID better,” said Koichi Nakano, a politics professor at Sophia University in Tokyo.
The bureaucratic, technological, logistical and political contortions required to execute this unprecedented feat — a massively complicated, deeply scrutinized spectacle during a time of global turmoil, death and suffering — have put an unwelcome spotlight on the country.
Most of all, it has highlighted some embarrassing things: that much of Japan doesn’t want the Games, that the nation’s vaccine rollout was late and is only now expanding, and that many suspect the Games are being forced on the country because the International Olympic Committee needs the billions in media revenue.
The worry here isn’t that Tokyo’s organizers can’t get to the finish line without a major disaster. That seems possible, and would allow organizers to claim victory, of a kind.
The fear is that once the athletes and officials leave town, the nation that unwillingly sacrificed much for the cause of global sporting unity might be left the poorer for it, and not just in the tens of billions of dollars it has spent on the Games.
The Japanese public may see an already bad coronavirus situation become even worse; Olympics visitors here have carried fast-spreading variants of the virus into a nation that is only approaching 25% fully vaccinated.
The Tokyo Olympics are, in one sense, a way for visitors to test for themselves some of the common perceptions about Japan that have contributed to this image of the country as the right place to play host. The results, early on in these Games, are somewhat of a mixed bag.

On the plus side, consider the airport arrivals for the thousands of Olympics participants. They showcased Japan’s ability to harness intensely organized workflow skills and bring them to bear on a specific task — in this case, protection against COVID-19 that might be brought in by a swarm of outsiders.
From the moment visitors stepped from their aircraft at Narita International Airport, they were corralled — gently, cheerfully, but in no uncertain terms firmly — into lines, then guided across the deserted airport like second-graders heading to recess. Barriers, some with friendly signs attached, ensured they got documents checked, forehead temperatures measured, hands sanitized and saliva extracted.
Symmetrical layouts of chairs, each meticulously numbered, greeted travelers awaiting their COVID-19 test results and Olympic credentials were validated while they waited. The next steps — immigration, customs — were equally efficient, managing to be both crisp and restrictive, but also completely amiable. You emerged from the airport a bit dizzy from all the guidance and herding, but with ego largely unbruised.
But there have also been conspicuous failures.
After the opening ceremony ended, for example, hundreds of people in the stadium were crammed into a corrallike pen, forced to wait for hours with only a flimsy barricade separating them from curious Japanese onlookers, while dozens of empty buses idled in a line stretching for blocks, barely moving.
Japan does have some obvious advantages over other democracies when it comes to hosting these Games, such as its economic might. As the world’s third-largest economy, after the United States and China, it was able to spend the billions needed to orchestrate these protean Games, with their mounting costs and changing demands.
Another advantage could be Japan’s well-deserved reputation for impeccable customer service. Few places in the world take as much pride in catering to visitors’ needs. It’s an open question, however, whether that real inclination toward hospitality will be tested by the extreme pressure.
A geopolitical imperative may be another big motivator. Japanese archrival China hosts next year’s Winter Games, and many nationalists here maintain that an Olympic failure is not an option amid the struggle with Beijing for influence in Asia. Yoshihide Suga, the prime minister, may also be hoping that a face-saving Games, which he can then declare successful, will help him retain power in fall elections.

And the potential holes in the argument that Japan is the perfect host nation for a pandemic Games?
Start, maybe, with leadership. It has never been clear who is in charge. Is it the city of Tokyo? The national government? The IOC? The Japanese Olympic Committee?
“This Olympics has been an all-Japan national project, but, as is often pointed out, nobody has a clear idea about who is the main organizer,” said Akio Yamaguchi, a crisis communications consultant at Tokyo-based AccessEast. “Uncertainty is the biggest risk.”
Japan has also faced a problem particular to democracies: a fierce, sometimes messy public debate about whether it was a good idea to hold the Games.
“After the postponement, we have never had a clear answer on how to host the Olympics. The focus was whether we can do it or not, instead of discussing why and how to do it,” said Yuji Ishizaka, a sports sociologist at Nara Women’s University.
“Japan is crucially bad at developing a ‘plan B.’ Japanese organizations are nearly incapable of drafting scenarios where something unexpected happens,” Ishizaka said. “There was very little planning that simulated the circumstances in 2021.”
Another possibly shaky foundation of outside confidence in Japan is its reputation as a technologically adept wonder of efficiency.
Arriving athletes and reporters “will probably realize that Japan is not as high-tech or as efficient as it has been often believed,” Nakano said. “More may then realize that it is the utter lack of accountability of the colluded political, business and media elites that ‘enabled’ Japan to hold the Olympics in spite of very negative public opinion — and quite possibly with considerable human sacrifice.”
The Tokyo Games are a Rorschach test of sorts, laying out for examination the many different ideas about Japan as Olympic host. For now, they raise more questions than they answer.

Source: Voice of America