MOSCOW, March 31. /TASS/. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has made the optimal decision when it decided to postpone the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo to summer 2021, IOC member Rene Fasel told TASS.

Earlier, Fasel told TASS that he favored postponing the Games to September-October 2020.

"I’ve changed my mind. I think <…> next year really is a better solution, because we really don’t know how the situation will evolve in September," he said, adding that some athletes will not have a chance to practice normally in present-day conditions. "I think the situation now in the world is so difficult [that] postponing to September would be maybe too early, because we really don’t know if it [the novel coronavirus outbreak] will be finished."

The IOC and IPC 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.

Yoshiro Mori, the head of the Tokyo-2020 Olympics Local Organizing Committee, announced on Monday that the Summer Olympic Games in Japan next year will start on July 23 and the Summer Paralympic Games will begin on August 24.

The WHO on March 11 declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. As of now, more than 720,000 people have been infected in more than 160 countries and over 35,000 have died. Russia has 1,836 cases of the infection, with nine deaths. The Russian government set up an Internet hotline to keep the public informed about the coronavirus situation.