World Athletics president Sebastian Coe agrees a COVID-19 vaccine will be needed before the delayed Tokyo Olympics can proceed next year.
Last month, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) postponed the Games for 12 months to July 2021, as the world tried to limit the spread of coronavirus, which has killed 220,000 people globally.
In a recent interview with Nikkan Sports, Tokyo 2020 president Yoshiro Mori said the Games would likely be cancelled, instead of rescheduled again, if the pandemic was still causing havoc next year.
ICO president Thomas Bach said the postponement would cost "several hundred million dollars".
"I think it's pretty clear, though, that you couldn't go on forever postponing an Olympic Games," Coe has told SNTV.
"There comes a point where you do have to start posing questions. I hope we're a little way off that yet.
"I'm really genuinely hoping that the pandemic will have been curtailed.
"I don't know enough to even speculate about vaccines. Forget the Olympic Games at the moment, I'm sure that's what most medical teams inside governments are trying to grapple with at the moment."
Coe is working to get athletes back in competition as quickly as possible, once it's safe to do so, but admitted he did not know what future months would look like.
The Olympics postponement has led to the world track championships in Eugene being rescheduled for August 2022, just after the Birmingham Commonwealth Games.
Coe is wary of the current schedule becoming too congested
"To have all that in one summer... it's a headache," Coe adds.
"If anyone had said to us that we would have a summer with a world championships, a Commonwealth Games and a European Championships all in the same year, you'd have clutched for the Panadol.
"Then to be confronted with the fact you've got to do it in a window of six-and-a-half, seven weeks, then you really do understand the complexity of it.
"But, set that aside, 2022 will be an extraordinary feast of athletics."
