Tokyo's 2020 Olympic Games are set to get ahead ‘with or without Covid,' the International Olympic Committee vice president John Coates has confirmed. 

The Games were pushed back a year due to the coronavirus pandemic and are now due to begin on July 23 in 2021. 

“It will take place with or without Covid," Coates told AFP.

He added: "Now very much these will be the Games that conquered Covid, the light at the end of the tunnel."

In July a new poll showed that 77 per cent of Japanese residents believe that the Games ‘cannot be held’ next summer. 

During the same month Tokyo 2020 chief executive Toshiro Muto announced that it was possible the Games could be held but with a ‘limited’ audience. 

However, earlier this year Games chief Yoshiro Mori said that if the event couldn’t be staged in 2021 that it would be cancelled altogether. 

IOC President Thomas Bach added: "You cannot forever employ 3,000 to 5,000 people in an organising committee. You cannot every year change the entire sports schedule worldwide of all the major federations.

"Now it's been postponed by one year, that's presented a monumental task in terms of re-securing all the venues... something like 43 hotels we had to get out of those contracts and re-negotiate for a year later.

“Sponsorships had to be extended a year, broadcast rights.”