Katsura Enyo, Director General of the Bureau of Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020 Preparation, said via video link that the Games had "concluded successfully."

Enyo, who worked for nine years on the delivery of the Games within the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, added: "The Games faced unexpected challenges with a one-year postponement and having to go ahead without spectators.

"However, thanks to the co-operation nationally and internationally we were able to deliver a safe and secure Games despite a historical challenge.

"I want to talk about what we have achieved through the most challenging Games, hoping our input will be a new model for future Games and will be of some help for other cities in times of crisis.

"To deliver a safe and secure Games during the pandemic, we took counter-measures such as decreasing the number of visitors from overseas and, in collaboration with the Organising Committee and the National Government, ensuring the enforcement of visas and tests.

"Experts have given us positive feedback that the Games were conducted safely and the COVID-19 testing protocols employed worked very well.

"The effective reproduction number, which represents how many people are likely to be infected by one already infected person, peaked on July 21 at 1.4 and it began to decrease to 0.68 on September 5 – the day the Paralympics closed.

"After the Games, the number of infected persons continued to decrease and in October the State of Emergency was lifted and the people of Japan are gradually recovering their daily life."

Enyo added: "The positivity rate of athletes and stakeholders from overseas was lower than originally projected.

"In addition, there was not a single case of infection spreading in the Athletes' Village."

A graphic showed in terms of positive tests on overseas stakeholders", those undertaken at the airports between July 1 and September 8, projected at 0.2 per cent, turned out to be 0.1 per cent, with 55 positives from 54,250 tests.

Screening tests during the same period, projected at 0.1 per cent, were eventually calculated as 0.03 per cent, with 304 positives from 1,014,170 tests undertaken.

In terms of recovery, it was projected that 8.5 people would be hospitalised; the final figure was two people.

As for those requiring designated hotels for recovery, the projected figure of 44.5 turned out to be 49, although there were no serious cases.

Turning to other legacies of the Games, Enyo added: "We had 43 venues across the country, mainly in Tokyo.

"A total of 11,000 and 4,400 athletes competed in the Olympics and Paralympics respectively, breaking 26 and 157 world records respectively.

"The Games were rich in diversity with the highest proportion of female athletes ever at 48 per cent, and a record number of openly LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) athletes.

"We built six new facilities for the Games which will be sustainable venues with multi-purpose uses for the local community."

Other achievements listed by Enyo included the management of Games traffic by encouraging normal users to limit their usage rather than relying on Games-dedicated traffic lanes.

"I believe that by hosting the Games, we were able to unite a world divided by COVID-19 through the power of sport, giving courage and hope to people around the world," she concluded.

"So the Tokyo 2020 Games have been the light of hope for mankind, and this experience is precisely the legacy of the Games."