«We are in contact with the political authorities,” Hoermann told Sky TV late Monday.

“We emphasized early on that we hope to vaccinate Team Germany in the second quarter (of the year) and early enough before the Olympic Games. But we definitely don’t want to push ourselves ahead.”

Olympic organizers in Japan and the International Olympic Committee are not making vaccination compulsory for athletes and officials travelling to the Games which were postponed last year owing to the pandemic and are to open on July 23.

Hoermann however said that “organizers in Japan assume that the majority of the people who travel to the Olympics will also be vaccinated.”

The DOSB president also said that a risk of infection will always and that those who are concerned should rather stay at home as “no one is forced into participating in Olympic Games.”

Looking a number of infections at the recent European athletics indoor championships in Poland and a fencing World Cup meet in Hungary, despite a strict hygiene concept, the Athletes Germany grouping also said that “all but impossible to completely rule out infections.”

The group welcomed that overseas spectators will not be allowed to go to the Olympics, and also called for a debate on vaccination.

“From our point of view, there is already a need for a social discussion as to whether athletes who represent Germany internationally should be vaccinated quickly as soon as the prioritized groups are vaccinated,” a statement said.

According to a YouGov survey commissioned by dpa and published on Tuesday 48 per cent of those questioned are against the staging of the Tokyo Games, with 33 per cent in favour of the Games and 19 per cent undecided.