The 2020 Tokyo Olympics will be postponed because of growing concerns about the coronavirus pandemic.

Dick Pound, a senior member of the International Olympic Committee, told USA Today on Monday that "postponement has been decided" and that "the games are not going to start on July 24."

Over the weekend, Canada and Australia said they would pull athletes from contention if the games went on as scheduled.

USA Swimming and USA Track and Field had called on the IOC to push back the games by a full year.

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The 2020 Tokyo Olympics will be postponed because of growing concerns about the coronavirus pandemic.

In a phone interview with USA Today on Monday, Dick Pound, a senior International Olympic Committee member, said that "on the basis of the information the IOC has, postponement has been decided."

"The parameters going forward have not been determined," he added. "But the games are not going to start on July 24, that much I know."

Pound also said he was confident that the repercussions of postponing the games would be "immense."

"It will come in stages," he said. "We will postpone this and begin to deal with all the ramifications of moving this, which are immense."

Dick Pound, a senior International Olympic Committee member, told USA Today on Monday that the 2020 Tokyo Olympics would be postponed. AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Dave Chidley

On Sunday, the IOC gave itself a four-week deadline to decide whether to proceed with the games. The committee had pledged to "step up scenario-planning" but resisted any concrete announcements about how it expected to move forward.

There had been mounting pressure on the IOC to take definitive action. The Canadian Olympic Committee on Sunday announced that it would withhold all athletes from competition should the games continue as scheduled. Australia followed suit shortly after, instructing its athletes to "prepare for a Tokyo Olympic Games in the northern summer of 2021."

The movement to postpone this summer's Olympics grew in the United States as well. On Friday, USA Swimming and USA Track and Field called for a one-year delay because of the coronavirus pandemic. Nearly three-quarters of the 125 US athletes who participated in a virtual town-hall event on Saturday said they supported postponing the Olympics, according to USA Today.

Still, the US Olympic Committee was reluctant to make any moves as large as Canada's or Australia's. The committee said on Sunday that it remained committed to ensuring that "all athletes have a robust and fulfilling Olympic and Paralympic experience, regardless of when that can safely occur."

President Donald Trump, meanwhile, tweeted on Monday that the US would be "guided by the wishes of Prime Minister Abe of Japan" in its decision about the Olympics.

Neither Pound nor the IOC has identified a new date for the Olympics. How the postponement will affect athletes, particularly those who would have entered the 2020 Olympics on the brink of retirement, remains to be seen.

This is a developing story, and we will update as more information becomes available.