FASANOC Follows Advice

10/7/20

The Fiji Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (FASANOC) will follow the International Olympic Committees (IOC) advice to continue to act responsibly when planning and scheduling sports events.

IOC President Thomas Bach in a Press Statement issued earlier this week that the sporting fraternity have to continue to act in a responsible way when it comes to planning and scheduling sports events. In our planning and scheduling, we all have a great responsibility, not only for our respective stakeholders, but for the entire sports community," he said.

"From experience, we know that every mishap that affects one of us affects all of us – and has the potential to undo the great progress we have made together in the past few months."

Mr Bach said in this context, the IOC was monitoring the potential of innovative testing methods for the safe organisation of events.

"In addition to the already existing test methods, there are a number of so-called rapid tests already on the market or under development.

"When used in combination with other virus countermeasures, such rapid tests give us an important additional tool to ensure a safe environment for everyone involved," he said.

Further to this good news with regard to testing, Mr Bach said there were very encouraging signals from the scientific and medical community about the availability of approved vaccines in the next few months, maybe even before the end of this year.

"Taken together, the developments in testing and in vaccines will greatly facilitate the safe organisation of sports events.

"We should all take the timing of the availability of these new tools into consideration when it comes to the scheduling of our events.

"Therefore, to the many different scenarios the IOC is planning for, we have added one to fully exploit the potential of testing and vaccines," he said.

Mr Bach said these recent weeks have shown that big sports events can be organised in a safe way even without a vaccine.

"On the other hand, we have to realise that even testing methods and vaccines are not the “silver bullet” that will solve all our problems.

"We just do not yet know the full impact of any potential vaccine. But, altogether, there are good reasons for cautious optimism," he said.

Mr Bach said the IOC would continue to study these developments closely and evaluate what consequences they would have for the organisation of sports events, ranging from the need to change certain rules of our respective organisations to medical, economic, social and logistical aspects.

"We have shown in recent months that we are indeed #StrongerTogether.

"In this spirit of solidarity, we should continue to make our contribution to the containment of the virus and to the recovery from the crisis.

"In advance, I would already like to thank you very much for your continued cooperation in our shared endeavour to give hope and confidence to the world through sport," said Mr Bach.

FASANOC Chief Executive, Lorraine Mar said that while we will continue to be guided by the IOC, FASANOC was also mindful of the requirements of the national response to COVID-19.

"Fiji as a country has done well to respond to COVID-19 and with the commencement of sports competitions we are on the right track, however our National Federations must continue to be diligent and follow their own guidelines in their Accreditation certification with Fiji National Sports Commission for competitions and events she said."

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