TOKYO — Tokyo Olympics offi­cials are propos­ing that the gov­ern­ment relax immi­gra­tion reg­u­la­tions to allow ath­letes to enter the coun­try before next year’s post­poned games and train dur­ing a 14-day quar­an­tine peri­od, Toshi­ro Muto, the CEO of the orga­niz­ing com­mit­tee said on Wednesday.

“We have to con­sid­er the unique­ness of the ath­letes and also their activ­i­ties,” Muto said, speak­ing in Japan­ese fol­low­ing a meet­ing of a task force con­sid­er­ing coun­ter­mea­sures against the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Inter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee, Tokyo city and nation­al gov­ern­ment offi­cials, and mem­bers of the orga­niz­ing com­mit­tee are hold­ing vir­tu­al meet­ings on Thurs­day and Fri­day focused on find­ing ways to hold the delayed Olympics dur­ing a pandemic.

The orga­niz­ing com­mit­tee and the IOC have said for months they are con­sid­er­ing many sce­nar­ios for how the games can open on July 23, 2021, but have offered noth­ing specific.

IOC Pres­i­dent Thomas Bach, who will address the online meet­ings on Thurs­day, has said a vac­cine and rapid test­ing would help, but added there is no “sil­ver bul­let” that will allow the Olympics to auto­mat­i­cal­ly happen.

Bach and new Japan­ese Prime Min­is­ter Yoshi­hide Suga spoke for 15 min­utes on Wednes­day, the for­eign min­istry said. They talked about pulling off the games, and Bach said he hoped to soon vis­it Japan.

Muto summed up deal­ing with so many dis­parate and often com­pet­ing inter­ests rep­re­sent­ing 15,400 Olympic and Par­a­lympic ath­letes, offi­cials, coach­es, spon­sors — not to men­tion the ques­tion of Japan­ese and for­eign fans.

“How we are going to decide is some­thing we have to decide,” Muto said. “But we haven’t dis­cussed by when we have to decide.”

Muto said a report would be forth­com­ing in Decem­ber, after talks with the IOC, nation­al Olympic com­mit­tees, sports fed­er­a­tions and myr­i­ad oth­er par­ties includ­ing broad­cast­ers, ath­letes, spon­sors and med­ical officials.

He acknowl­edged that ath­letes might have to use pub­lic trans­porta­tion in Japan, sug­gest­ing a com­plete “bub­ble” would be impossible.

And he raised the issue of how the pan­dem­ic is at very dif­fer­ent stages in many coun­tries — as is test­ing. Ath­letes would be expect­ed to be test­ed before they leave home, and then be test­ed again in Japan.

“Depend­ing on the coun­try, the reli­a­bil­i­ty of the test­ing is still an issue,” he said. “The accu­ra­cy of the tests may not be uniform.”

Left unsaid so far is an offi­cial esti­mate of what the one-year delay will cost. Most esti­mates sug­gest sev­er­al bil­lion dol­lars, most of which falls to Japan­ese taxpayers.

The two-day meet­ings come the same week that the Japan­ese media report­ed again on the bribery scan­dal tied to the Tokyo Olympics. It forced the res­ig­na­tion last year of Japan­ese Olympic Com­mit­tee Pres­i­dent Tsunekazu Takeda.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford also released a study last week say­ing that Tokyo is the most expen­sive Sum­mer Olympics on record.

Japan has record­ed about 1,500 deaths from COVID-19, much low­er per capi­ta than the Unit­ed States, Brazil, or India.