Winter Olympics-related Covid-19 cases tick up as more teams arrive in China
- Organising committee official says increase expected as more participants land in Beijing
- Isolation period within Games’ closed loop halved and virus did not appear to be spreading, he says
The Beijing Winter Olympics organising committee said 29 of the 36 positive cases were among 1,418 Olympic-related arrivals at Beijing Capital International Airport on Friday. Of those, 19 were athletes or team officials, and 10 were “other stakeholders” – a category that includes the media and Games partners.
The committee said the remaining seven confirmed cases were also other stakeholders and detected within the closed-loop, a system set up to isolate the event and minimise transmission of the disease.
Games participants enter the closed loop on arrival in Beijing, a city battling to contain outbreaks of the Omicron and Delta variants.
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Dozens of positive Covid cases found in Beijing Olympic bubble and airport ahead of Winter Olympics
The total is above the 12 cases detected among Olympics-related personnel on Thursday, and the 23 were reported for Wednesday.
Huang Chun, deputy director of the organising committee’s Pandemic Prevention and Control Office, said the rise in cases was expected because of the increase in arrivals, with less than a week to go until the start of the Games.
“In general, the proportion of [confirmed cases detected] at customs is high, but the transmission and incidence within the closed loop are still low,” Huang said.
He said the isolation of confirmed cases and close contacts was a very effective approach that had been put to the test at international competitions last year as well as preparations earlier this month.
Under the approach, people who test positive and their close contacts are isolated and must return two negative tests before resuming activities within the loop.
Huang also said the isolation period for confirmed cases in the loop had been halved to seven days.
“Experts found that many [positive] personnel entering the country had been infected in the past or had recovered, and their infectivity was extremely low,” he said, adding that all participants had to submit to daily tests and Covid-19 had not spread within the loop.
Brian McCloskey, chairman of the Games’ medical expert panel, said organisers were confident in their system of Covid-19 prevention, and infections were unlikely to leak out into the public.
“We are now just going through the peak period of people arriving in China and therefore we expect to see the highest numbers at this stage,” McCloskey said.
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Final preparations under way for artificial snow production at Beijing Winter Olympics
In addition to the Olympic-related cases, China reported 59 new infections on Saturday, including five in Beijing and 18 in Zhejiang province, the source of an Omicron outbreak that has spread to at least four provinces.
National Health Commission official He Qinghua said epidemic conditions remained stable overall, with some sporadic outbreaks.
Strict “zero-Covid” preventive measures remain in place, with some local governments adding restrictions, including ordering people returning to their hometowns over the Lunar New Year to enter and pay for mandatory centralised isolation.
But NHC spokesman Mi Feng said local governments should not impose further limits and arbitrarily prevent people from returning for the holidays.
Additional reporting by Reuters
