Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. on Tuesday asked the Department of Health and the Philippine Embassy in Tokyo to help prized Filipino gymnast Carlos Yulo to get vaccinated before he competes in the upcoming Tokyo Olympics.
Yulo, currently training in Japan for more than a year now, has skipped the vaccine rollout for Olympic- and Southeast Asian Games-bound athletes held recently at the Manila Prince Hotel in Ermita, Manila.
“@DOHgovph Please help our Olympic contender. Carlos Yulo and his coach Munehiro Kujimiya need to be vaccinated now. They are in Tokyo. @DFAPHL please contact our Embassy in Tokyo to get this done. I will DM @dododulay the cell number of Munehiro Kujimiya. Soonest please,” Locsin said in a tweet.
It is not clear who requested Locsin to help the 2019 World Gymnastics Artistic Championships gold medalist get vaccinated while preparing for his stint in the Olympics.
Last week, Gymnastics Association of the Philippines (GAP) President Cynthia Carrion said she did not allow Yulo to get vaccinated for now “because it might affect his training”.
“I told him after the Olympics na lang (to get vaccinated) and he said, ‘It’s your decision, ma’am.’ We feel that it’s too close already and we don’t want anything to disrupt his training,” Carrion was quoted as saying.
Among those included in the Philippine Olympic Committee-backed vaccination rollout were athletes, coaches, officials, and journalists bound for the two major international sporting events.
Aside from being the first male athlete in Southeast Asia to win a gold medal at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, Yulo also won two gold medals and five silver medals in his debut appearance at the 2019 Southeast Asian Games.
Although vaccination is not required in the Tokyo Olympics amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the International Olympic Committee announced last month that it has reached a deal with Pfizer and BioNTech to allow a significant number of athlete and officials traveling to the Olympic games the opportunity to be vaccinated even before they arrive in Japan.
This move is seen to assuage the skeptical Japanese public of which a vast majority does not want the games to take place due to the threat of the pandemic.