Beijing Winter Olympics organisers confident of keeping Covid-19 outbreaks within its ‘closed loop’

Name: NHL confirms their players will miss Beijing Winter Olympics amid Covid-19 surge
Uploaded: 2021-12-23T11:36:40.000Z
Duration: 1 min 31 s
Description: NHL confirms their players will miss Beijing Winter Olympics amid Covid-19 surge

The rapid spread of Omicron around the globe means outbreaks in China during the Winter Games are likely, says Olympics epidemic control official

Testing, quarantine and treatment rules for athletes and Olympics-related personnel are different than for others in China

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Journalists stand at the National Ski Jumping Centre during a government-organised media tour to Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics venues in Zhangjiakou, Hebei province, on December 21, 2021. Photo: Reuters

Zhuang Pinghui

Published: 7:36pm, 23 Dec 2021Updated: 9:21pm, 23 Dec 2021

The Beijing Winter Olympics organising committee predicts cluster outbreaks will occur during the Games but remains confident it can contain Covid-19 cases within its Olympics “closed loop” without allowing the virus to spread to China’s host cities.

Huang Chun, an official in charge of the epidemic control for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic and Paralympic organising committee, made the statement as the Omicron has spread to 106 countries and became the dominant strain in several countries, including the United States, Britain and Denmark.

Huang said avoiding the spread of infection to the host locations – Beijing and Zhangjiakou cities and Yanqing district – was the “ultimate goal” of Covid-19 prevention and control for the Games. He said that when facing a highly infectious strain such as Omicron, the “bottom line” must be well guarded, the closed-loop management policy enforced and coronavirus testing rules followed.

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NHL confirms their players will miss Beijing Winter Olympics amid Covid-19 surge

“We are very confident that we will control the spread [from the Olympics venues] to the host city,” Huang said.

Although China adopts strict quarantine measures for inbound travellers as part of its zero-tolerance Covid-19 response, Olympic athletes and participants will be exempt from the 21-day quarantine if they are vaccinated. The policy will not change, even though the Omicron variant has been shown to evade vaccine-induced immunity and cause breakthrough infections.

Huang said the Beijing organising committee “strongly recommends” athletes, support staff and other participants have a booster shot before travelling to China, saying many countries had already inoculated their athletes with boosters.

China has imposed less stringent requirements on athletes and other Games-related personnel than for others. People affiliated with the Olympics must take daily coronavirus tests and anyone found positive but asymptomatic will be taken to a facility for isolation, rather than a hospital as required for people not associated with the Games.