"We will not be seek­ing to gain pri­or­i­ty ac­cess for Team TTO ath­letes."

This, from T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis, re­it­er­at­ing the same po­si­tion he re­vealed some two weeks ago on the ques­tion as to whether his or­gan­i­sa­tion will be ap­proach­ing the gov­ern­ment to give Olympic-bound ath­letes pri­or­i­ty to re­ceive the COVID-19 vac­cine ahead of the up­com­ing Tokyo Olympic Games.

Lewis con­firmed for Guardain Me­dia Sports on Wednes­day that the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC) has been in reg­u­lar con­tact with the Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tees (NOCs) as the start of the pre­mier sport­ing event, which was post­poned last year due to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, draws near, set to run from Ju­ly 23 to Au­gust 8 in Japan.

"Last Fri­day, there was a con­sul­ta­tion so its been a num­ber of weeks now that the TTOC has fo­cussed on lo­gis­tics and all ar­eas and as­pects re­lat­ed to the in­cred­i­bly chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tions as it sur­rounds the Tokyo 2020 Games so I was very clear any con­sid­er­a­tion for pri­or­i­ty ac­cess and a re­quest for pri­or­i­ty ac­cess for Team TTO was not the way we want­ed to go, we mean­ing the TTOC not the way the IOC, was lean­ing and now we have the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) com­ing out and clear­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ing their thoughts on the mat­ter so again I would have com­mu­ni­cat­ed clear­ly that the TTOC was not go­ing to be any part of the quest for pri­or­i­ty ac­cess for Team TTO ath­letes and of­fi­cials," said Lewis.

Ex­cite­ment is al­ready brew­ing with the thought of see­ing lo­cal ath­letes, Sports­man and Sports­woman of the Year swim­mer Dy­lan Carter and cy­clists Te­niel Camp­bell, who have al­ready qual­i­fied for the Games, com­pet­ing against the best in the world seek­ing podi­um glo­ry.

The IOC is work­ing with the NOCs to en­cour­age and as­sist ath­letes, of­fi­cials and stake­hold­ers, to get vac­ci­nat­ed in their home coun­tries in line with the na­tion­al guide­lines.

"Of course, this is part of con­tribut­ing to the safe en­vi­ron­ment of the Games, so it's very im­por­tant for TTOC to en­gage with the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties

"The re­al­i­ty is that we are in the fi­nal stretch for the prepa­ra­tion for the Olympic and Par­a­lympic Games Tokyo 2020 and Olympic and Par­a­lympic Win­ter Games Bei­jing 2022 so that the IOC has been fo­cussed along with two dif­fer­ent sets of or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tees one is the Tokyo 2020 or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee and the Bei­jing Win­ter Games or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tees, that what they have been do­ing is fo­cus­ing on a com­pre­hen­sive ap­proach to com­ing up with COVID-19 coun­ter­mea­sures as it re­lates to COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to Lewis, the IOC will re­main fo­cussed at this point in time to just en­sur­ing that the Tokyo Olympic and Par­a­lympic Games Tokyo 2020 and Olympic and Par­a­lympic Win­ter Games Bei­jing 2022 can be held safe­ly. The head body has been fo­cus­ing on a num­ber of COVID-19 coun­ter­mea­sures re­volv­ing around in­for­ma­tion from WHO from with­in the coun­try them­selves, in this case, Tokyo and Bei­jing, as it re­lates to ac­cess in­to the coun­try, per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment, test­ing, trac­ing and vac­ci­na­tions.

"At this point in time, the COVID-19 coun­ter­mea­sures are be­ing doc­u­ment­ed and the first ver­sion of that play­book will be shared with NOCs ahead of a chef-de mis­sion brief­ing which will be con­duct­ed joint­ly with the Tokyo 2020 or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee and the IOC in Feb­ru­ary," ad­vised Lewis.

"The play­book is in­tend­ed to serve as an es­sen­tial ref­er­ence doc­u­ment for the plan­ning of any COVID-19 af­fect­ed op­er­a­tions in Tokyo and will be reg­u­lar­ly up­dat­ed over the com­ing months to en­sure all the nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion and re­quire­ments are avail­able to the NOCs as they have con­firmed."

The IOC, in its most re­cent con­sul­ta­tion with NOCs, again reaf­firmed that vac­ci­na­tion will not be manda­to­ry for par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Olympic and the Par­a­lympic Games. How­ev­er, the vac­ci­na­tion of the most num­ber of Games' par­tic­i­pants pos­si­ble will con­tribute in in­creas­ing the safe­ty of the Games and ac­cord­ing to Lewis, NOCs have been asked to play an im­por­tant role at a na­tion­al lev­el.

"In re­spect of vac­ci­na­tion, a cou­ple of weeks ago, I would have af­firmed that the TTOC's po­si­tion in re­gard of vac­cines that we would be not be seek­ing to gain pri­or­i­ty ac­cess for Team TTO ath­letes as we be­lieve that the most vul­ner­a­ble sec­tions of so­ci­ety and health care work­ers need to be first in line. The TTOC was ap­proached in re­spect of pos­si­bly writ­ing to the gov­ern­ment to get pri­or­i­ty ac­cess but that wasn't the way we want­ed to go."