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

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

Beijing Winter Olympics 2022

Zhuang Pinghuiin Beijing

Published: 7:36pm, 23 Dec 2021

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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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“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.

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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.

Asymptomatic carriers may be released to compete or go back to work after proving they have returned two negative tests with an interval of 24 hours.

People who return a positive result and who have Covid-19 symptoms will be sent for hospital treatment. They will be released when they return two negative coronavirus tests and no longer have symptoms.

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Close contacts – who outside the Olympics context would otherwise be quarantined for 21 days in Beijing – could go back to competition or work if they returned negative tests, Huang said. The epidemic control rules stipulate that close contacts must quarantine in a single room and dine alone, having frequent tests for 14 days.

Huang said the Beijing Capital International Airport, the country’s largest airport and the designated Olympics landing point, will have a closed loop within it, preventing Games participants from mixing with the general public.

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Beijing has not yet announced whether it will allow domestic audiences to attend the Games, even though the Winter Olympics is just 43 days away, starting on February 4. The committee has previously stated that there will be no spectators from overseas because of epidemic control reasons.

Han Zirong, vice-president and secretary general of the Beijing organising committee, told reporters the committee was still formulating and studying its audience plans which would take the epidemic situation into account.

China, which has partly closed its borders during the pandemic, has reported six Omicron infections imported from overseas travellers. It is also battling outbreaks of the Delta variant in Shaanxi, Henan, Guangxi, Zhejiang and Guangdong.