T&T sailor An­drew Lewis is in Japan.

Lewis, who will com­pete in the men’s laser event, is fea­tur­ing at his third Olympic Games which will open in Tokyo next Fri­day and runs un­til Au­gust 8.

This was shared on Wednes­day by the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) Bri­an Lewis at a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence which he used to up­date the sta­tus of the man­age­ment team ahead of the de­layed Games.

The oth­er mem­bers of the sail­ing con­tin­gent are man­ag­er Ka­iron Ser­rette and phys­io­ther­a­pist May­tas Toth and they will be op­er­at­ing from a Satel­lite Vil­lage.

Mean­while, a mem­ber of the del­e­ga­tion was with­drawn and re­placed due to test­ing pos­i­tive for COVID-19. Ac­cord­ing to Lewis, the lo­cal­ly-based Olympic del­e­ga­tion must un­der­go two PCR tests with­in 96 and 72 hours of their de­par­ture for Tokyo. They must ar­rive in Japan with two neg­a­tive PCR tests.

“The PCR test, what would have hap­pened is that we (TTOC) would have in­sti­tut­ed a 14-day PCR test for the lo­cal­ly-based ath­letes and that have worked well in terms of every­one who is sup­posed to be trav­el­ling out of T&T.

“All the in­di­vid­u­als who were sup­posed to trav­el out had test­ed neg­a­tive. We would have had one mem­ber of the del­e­ga­tion to date, who would have a pos­i­tive test, out of re­spect of pri­va­cy as you would ap­pre­ci­ate we can’t name that in­di­vid­ual. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, that in­di­vid­ual will not be able to trav­el and we have put in place the re­place­ment.

“I can say at this point in time it is re­lat­ed to the med­ical unit, so that as I said as un­for­tu­nate that it may be, it high­lights again the rig­or­ous­ness of the COVID-19 counter mea­sures put in place, that TTOC ad­her­ing to, by Japan gov­ern­ment, the Tokyo Met­ro­pol­i­tan gov­ern­ment, the 2020 or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee and the Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee.”

Dur­ing the press con­fer­ence, the TTOC pres­i­dent shared three mem­bers of the 60-mem­ber del­e­ga­tion were en route to host city. Trav­el­ling out to Tokyo were COVID-19 Li­ai­son Of­fi­cer (CLO) Rheeza Grant and two mem­bers of med­ical team - Dr Rudranath Ram­sawak, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer and Dr Nailah Adams.

“They’re on the way to Tokyo. The rest of the med­ical con­tin­gent will leave lat­er in­clud­ing Dr Anyl Gopiesingh, who main­ly as­signed to track and field,” said Lewis and in terms of the PCR test he added: “We have not have is­sues per­tain­ing to that. The re­al­i­ty is that Team TTO man­age­ment - the Chef de Mis­sion Lovie San­tana and the CLO Rheeza Grant would have got­ten that right so far.”

Pay­ing close at­ten­tion to the Tokyo 2020 Play­book, Lewis ad­vised that his team has had on­go­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions with the var­i­ous team man­agers and in­side the last week, host­ing two COVID-19 counter mea­sures We­bi­na­rs. It was manda­to­ry that every mem­ber of the del­e­ga­tion at­tend­ed at least one.

“Ad­her­ing to the COVID-19 counter mea­sures as strict and re­stric­tive as they are, is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant. Fail­ures and breach­es can re­sult in the Tokyo 2020 or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee and the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC) and the Japan gov­ern­ment and the Tokyo Met­ro­pol­i­tan gov­ern­ment warn­ing, sus­pend­ing and the ul­ti­mate sanc­tion of send­ing you back home.”

There will quar­an­ti­ning on ar­rival and for the first three days at ones ac­com­mo­da­tion. How­ev­er, as ath­letes and of­fi­cials, they will have per­mis­sion to per­form your Games-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties dur­ing these three days, if tests are neg­a­tive for COVID-19 every day; and there will be an app down­loaded on­to each mem­ber of the del­e­ga­tion smart­phone to track where­abouts so as not to vi­o­late the pro­to­cols in place.

Yes­ter­day, it was re­port­ed that Tokyo, where a state of emer­gency has been im­posed un­til Au­gust 22, record­ed 1,149 new COVID-19 cas­es yes­ter­day, the most in near­ly six months. Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, high­ly con­ta­gious virus vari­ants have fu­elled the lat­est wave of in­fec­tions, and fail­ure to vac­ci­nate peo­ple faster has left the pop­u­la­tion vul­ner­a­ble.

“Vac­ci­na­tion is not manda­to­ry but en­cour­aged. The IOC en­cour­ag­ing and they have re­port­ed as much as 85 per cent of the del­e­ga­tion the ath­letes and coach­es who will be in the Olympic Vil­lage would be vac­cin­nat­ed. From the TTOC’s per­spec­tive, we have sort the ob­jec­tive of en­cour­ag­ing to get to 100 per cent. At this point time ofthe en­tire del­e­ga­tion, we have a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age ful­ly vac­cined,” said the TTOC head.