Tokyo's postponed Olympics will go ahead next year regardless of the coronavirus pandemic, International Olympic Committee (IOC) Vice President John Coates told AFP, vowing they will be the “Games that conquered Covid”.

“It will take place with or without Covid. The Games will start on July 23 next year,” said Coates, who heads the committee's coordination commission for the Tokyo Games.

“The Games were going to be, their theme, the Reconstruction Games after the devastation of the tsunami,” he said, referring to a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan in 2011.

“Now very much these will be the Games that conquered Covid, the light at the end of the tunnel.”