AN ONGOING debate as to where nurses are best placed when the Olympics start in July has left some incensed, after Tokyo Olympic organisers requested to have 500 of them dispatched to help out with the games. In a statement from the Japan Federation of Medical Workers’ Unions, secretary general Susumu Morita said the focus should be on the pandemic, not the Olympics. “We must definitely stop the proposal to send as Olympic volunteers those nurses, tasked with protecting the fight against the serious coronavirus pandemic,” Morita said. “I am extremely infuriated by the insistence of pursuing the Olympics despite the risk to patients’ and nurses’ health and lives.”