Coronavirus: ‘China must learn from Tokyo and open up for 2022 Winter Olympics’
- ‘Impossible’ to ask athletes to undergo 14 days’ quarantine and a week’s monitoring, says former top epidemiologist and member of experts’ groups for 2022 games
- The Beijing organising committee should reach an agreement on Covid-19 control measures with the IOC, he suggests
China must reopen its borders in time for the Beijing Winter Olympics in February, a leading Chinese scientist has said.
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Weather does not affect Covid-19 transmission significantly, according to the World Health Organization. But during winter people tended to stay indoors, in enclosed or crowded places with poor ventilation, which can aid virus transmission.
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“We don’t feel the presence of the Paralympics here will have a direct impact on raising the number of cases or even decreasing the number of cases,” Parsons told Kyodo News on Saturday.
According to the International Olympic Committee, the cumulative Covid-19 positivity rate among Olympic Games participants from July 1 to August 8, when the event ended, was 0.02 per cent.
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Athletes were tested at least twice before they arrived in Japan. They were then tested at the airport upon arrival and every day during their stay at the Olympic Village, the IOC said.
Almost all of the IOC members and staff arriving in Japan were vaccinated, while 85 per cent of residents at the Olympic Village were vaccinated, it added.
The Covid-19 measures in Tokyo were developed by the Tokyo organising committee, IOC and IPC, in close collaboration with the Japanese government and Tokyo metropolitan government.