Next year’s Commonwealth Games might not be allowed to go ahead, despite the UK’s efforts to get the coronavirus outbreak under control.

Birmingham City Council were ‘working on the assumption’ the event would be held as the vaccine would be ‘well and truly’ rolled out, its leader Ian Ward said.

But with an ever-changing picture of highly contagious mutant strains and staggering statistics on deaths and infections in the UK, he warned a contingency plan may be needed after all.

Speaking at a West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) Board meeting, Cllr Ward said: ‘We can’t be certain what is going to happen going forward – indeed, the Olympic Games that were postponed to the summer of this year are now looking in some doubt again, so we can’t be certain.

‘Who knows what will happen next? There may be another variant to the virus and we may all be back to square one.

‘But I’m going to take an optimistic view and optimistically look to the future and the hosting of the Commonwealth Games, as a benefit not just for Birmingham but for the whole of the region.’

Despite more than 4million Brits having had the coronavirus vaccine already, the country’s fight is far from over.

The UK now has the highest Covid death rate in the world, according to Oxford research platform Our World in Data, as the NHS faces running out of critical care beds as early as next week.

Even if the games didn’t go ahead, Cllr Ward said various projects launched especially for it, such as the Aquatics Centre in Sandwell, the bowls centre in Leamington Spa and the mountain bike venue in Cannock Chase, would be a huge benefit to the region.

The city council has agreed to contribute £184million to Birmingham 2022, with the overall budget for the games standing at £778million, Insidethegames reports.

A £500million plan for an Athletes’ Village for more than 6,000 participants and officials was scrapped in August after organisers admitted it might not be ready in time for the games, due to run from July 28 to August 8 2022.

In March the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo were postponed by a year as coronavirus spread rapidly across the globe.

The event is still due to go ahead from July 23 to August 8, but a Kyodo News poll on Sunday showed 80% of people in Japan would rather it didn’t go ahead.

The survey found 35.3% want the Games to be cancelled and 44.8% favoured another delay.

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