Medicine at mass gatherings: current progress of preparedness of emergency medical services and disaster medical response during 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games from the perspective of the Academic Consortium (AC2020)

Abstract

Mass gatherings are events characterized by "the concentration of people at a specific location for a specific purpose over a set period of time that have the potential to strain the planning and response resources of the host country or community." Previous reports showed that, as a result of the concentration of people in the limited area, injury and illness occurred due to several factors. The response plan should aim to provide timely medical care to the patients and to reduce the burden on emergency hospitals, and to maintain a daily emergency medical services system for residents of the local area. Although a mass gathering event will place a significant burden on the local health-care system, it can provide the opportunity for long-term benefits of public health-care and improvement of daily medical service systems after the end of the event. The next Olympic and Paralympic Games will be held in Tokyo, during which mass gatherings will occur on a daily basis in the context of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) epidemic. The Academic Consortium on Emergency Medical Services and Disaster Medical Response Plan during the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2020 (AC2020) was launched 2016, consisting of 28 academic societies in Japan, it has released statements based on assessments of medical risk and publishing guidelines and manuals on its website. This paper outlines the issues and countermeasures for emergency and disaster medical care related to the holding of this big event, focusing on the activities of the academic consortium.

Optimization of COVID-19 prevention and control measures during the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics: a model-based study

“…Due to the COVID-19 epidemic, a significant amount of challenging work has been done on epidemic prevention and safety [ 5 ]. First, the spread of the Delta and Omicron strains brought about uncertainty in that the Delta and Omicron variant are more contagious than the original strain [ 6 , 7 ].…”

G20 Summit and emergency medical services in Osaka, Japan

“…However, our results showed that by carefully enacting proactive measures for mass gatherings, the provision of EMC can remain effective. As of April 2021, the preparation of EMS and disaster medical response system for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games (due to start 23 July, 2021) has been steadily underway, 11 and our results suggested that careful measures, like those implemented for the G20 Osaka Summit, would help maintain the EMS system during mass gatherings such as the Olympics.…”

COVID-19 and other respiratory tract infections at mass gathering religious and sporting events

“…The rapid global spread of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic since its first discovery in November 2019 in Wuhan, China, exposed the inadequacies of all global public health systems. The WHO published interim guidelines for the planning for MGs at the time of the current COVID-19 pandemic [9] as well as the publication of recommendations to deal with MG events [10 ▪▪ ,11 ▪▪ ]. Widespread lockdown measures including travel restrictions to limit epidemic spread led to postponement or cancellation of large MG events [12 ▪ ].…”