Globally, sport organisations have been hit with a financial burden due to cancellation and postponement of events, which has caused a loss in ticket sale revenue and the need to extend athlete support for the now postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

Now taking place in 2021, the Tokyo Games were moved back a year by the International Olympic Committee due to the ongoing crisis which has led to heavy travel and social restrictions around the world.

Olympic programmes, that provide more financial support to athletes in the run-up to the Games, have also had to be extended by a year, despite organisations not receiving a second year's worth of income due to the impact on Government funding and sponsors.

The decision to provide financial support by the OCM came from the OCM Trust Management Committee, with money coming from the OCM Trust Fund.

It had earlier created a special COVID-19 Fund to assist the national associations, with administrative expenses for the period where revenue had been heavily affected.

The total grant awarded to the 30 associations was around $61,000 (£50,000/€56,000) with a maximum of $2,300 (£1,900/€2,100) being distributed to an individual association.

The grant will be disbursed within the next week.

To date, there have been more than 6,700 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Malaysia, resulting in the deaths of 109 people.

Worldwide, there are more than 4.21 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, resulting in the deaths of more than 284,000 people.