The African nation of Guinea has withdrawn from the Tokyo Olympic Games just one day before the opening ceremony.
Sanoussy Bantama Sow, the country’s minister of sports, announced in a statement that their five Olympic athletes would not be participating “due to the resurgence of COVID variants,” according to the Associated Press.
“The government, concerned with preserving the health of Guinean athletes, has decided with regret to cancel Guinea’s participation in the 32nd Olympics scheduled for Tokyo,” the statement said.
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One of the five athletes who had qualified to represent Guinea in Tokyo, Fatoumata Yarie Camara, a freestyle wrestler, expressed confusion as to why her own country decided that it was unsafe for them to partake, while the International Olympic Committee is pushing forward.
“The question I ask myself is why has Guinea decided not to participate in the Olympic Games on the grounds of coronavirus when the organizing country like Japan hasn’t canceled these Games because of this sickness?” she said. “Why? That’s what I ask myself, and I still can’t find an answer.”
The other athletes who qualified include swimmers Mamadou Tahirou Bah and Fatoumata Lamarana Toure, 100-meter runner Aissata Deen Conte, and judo competitor Mamadou Samba Bah.
Guinea is the second country to pull out of the games following North Korea, whose Olympic Committee decided to back out of the games during a meeting on March 25, explaining that they wanted to protect athletes from the “world public health crisis caused by COVID-19.”
Representatives for the Olympics are not ruling out the possibility of canceling the games at the last minute due to rising COVID-19 transmission rates in Japan, though a handful of athletes have already been forced to withdraw from the games after contracting the disease.
“We cannot predict what the epidemic will look like in the future. So, as for what to do should there be any surge of positive cases, we’ll discuss accordingly if that happens,” Tokyo 2020 CEO Toshiro Muto said at a press conference on Tuesday.
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After the 2020 Olympic Games were postponed last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the IOC imposed strict regulations to prevent the spread of the disease at the delayed games, including frequent testing and quarantining as needed.
The games are set to begin on Friday and extend until Aug. 8.
