TOKYO, March 30. /TASS/. The Summer Olympic Games in Japan next year will start on July 23 and the Summer Paralympic Games will begin on August 24, Japan’s NHK boadcaster reported on Monday.

According to the Japanese broadcaster, the agreement on the new dates has been reached by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the Tokyo-2020 Organizing Committee, the municipal authorities of Tokyo and the government of Japan.

It followed a telephone conversation of Yoshiro Mori, the head of the Tokyo-2020 Olympics Local Organizing Committee, with President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Thomas Bach earlier in the day.

"IOC President Thomas Bach and the Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee held a conference call today to discuss in detail the revised dates of the Tokyo 2020 Games," the IOC quoted Mori as saying in a statement.

"I proposed that the Games should be hosted between July and August 2021, and I really appreciate that President Bach, having discussed this proposal with the various international sports federations and other related organizations, kindly accepted my proposal," he continued.

"A certain amount of time is required for the selection and qualification of athletes and for their training and preparation, and the consensus was that staging the rescheduled Games during the summer vacation in Japan would be preferable," Mori stated. "In terms of transport, arranging volunteers and the provision of tickets for those in Japan and overseas, as well as allowing for the COVID-19 situation, we think that it would be better to reschedule the Games to one year later than planned, in the summer of 2021."

The agreed new dates are July 23 - August 8, 2021 for the Summer Olympic Games; and August 24 - September 5, 2021 for the Summer Paralympic Games.

Commenting on today’s decision IOC President Bach said: "I am confident that, working together with the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the Japanese Government and all our stakeholders, we can master this unprecedented challenge."

"Humankind currently finds itself in a dark tunnel," Bach said. "These Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 can be a light at the end of this tunnel."

The IOC (International Olympic Committee) and the IPC (the International Paralympic Committee) announced their decision on March 24 to postpone for one year the tournaments in Japan due to the continuous COVID-19 spread. The 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo were initially scheduled to be held between July 24 and August 9, and the 2020 Summer Paralympic Games were planned to be organized between August 25 and September 6.

COVID-19 Global Spread

On December 31, 2019, the Chinese authorities reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) about an outbreak of pneumonia of unknown etiology in Wuhan, an economic and industrial megalopolis with a population of 11 million.

The virus was identified on January 7 as 2019-nCoV. The World Health Organization declared in January that the new coronavirus outbreak was a public health emergency of international concern, characterizing it as an epidemic with multiple locations.

On February 11, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated that the organization gave the novel coronavirus an official name of COVID-19. On March 11, the World Health Organization officially stated that the continuously spreading novel coronavirus was a global pandemic.

As of today, 199 countries and territories reported confirmed coronavirus cases. According to the latest reports, over 735,040 cases of patients infected with the novel coronavirus have been confirmed worldwide. The virus’ death toll has reached 34,806, yet more than 156,130 patients have recovered from the disease.