Geneva (AFP)

The World Health Organization (WHO) assured Friday not to have issued an opinion on the holding of the Olympics-2020 in Tokyo in view of the coronavirus epidemic, but said it was ready to provide all assistance technique necessary for the organizers to make their own decision.

"We have not given the IOC (International Olympic Committee) notice for the Olympics one way or another, and we will not," the head of the humanitarian emergency department at WHO, Michael Ryan, asked about fears that the epidemic weigh on the holding of the Tokyo Olympics (July 24 to August 9).

Earlier today, John Coates, President of the IOC Coordinating Committee, assured Tokyo that "the advice we have received from WHO is that there is no reason to plan for an emergency for canceling or moving the Games ".

But Ryan said "at this stage there has been no particular discussion or particular decision taken" regarding "mass events in the coming months" around the world.

"It is not our responsibility to cancel or not cancel any event whatsoever," added the senior WHO official, who is based in Geneva.

"The role of WHO is to offer a technical opinion, support (...) a risk assessment around an event", but the maintenance or not of a large event "is a decision which host countries and organizing bodies ".

He added that over the past two decades, the specialized UN agency has worked with the organizers of the Olympic Games and the host countries, and "we will obviously give them all the support and technical advice for their own risk assessment and management for Covid-19 ", the official name of the disease.

While reaffirming that there is no threat hanging over the Olympic Games-2020 in Tokyo, the IOC admitted on Friday that it had to carry out "a big job of communication" to inform in the face of the epidemic of coronavirus which has already made nearly 1,400 dead, mostly in China.

With 33 cases in the country and more than 200 people in quarantine on a boat off Yokohama, Japan is the most affected country after China. The first death of an infected person was announced Thursday by Japanese authorities, an 80-year-old woman in a region near Tokyo.

On Thursday, the chairman of the Tokyo Games organizing committee, Yoshiro Mori, castigated "irresponsible rumors", hammering that he did not plan to "postpone or cancel the Games" because of the epidemic of coronavirus.

© 2020 AFP