A worker prepares to take a COVID-19 test at the 2022 Winter Olympics on Wednesday. So far, 111 athletes and officials have tested positive for the virus at the Olympics, including from airport arrivals.
Natacha Pisarenko / AP
hide captions
switch captions
Natacha Pisarenko / AP
A worker prepares to take a COVID-19 test at the 2022 Winter Olympics on Wednesday. So far, 111 athletes and officials have tested positive for the virus at the Olympics, including from airport arrivals.
Natacha Pisarenko / AP
Decorated snowmobile runner Elana Meyers Taylor is expected to lead the way for Team America as the flag bearer at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics on Friday. Instead, she hiding in isolation cheer on her teammates as she waits until the infection passes.
Although she has no symptoms, another negative test stands between three-time medalist and one-time medalist becoming the most decorated female skier in the history of the Olympics. (Winter Olympic participants must have two consecutive negative PCR tests in a 24-hour period before they can be quarantined.)
Meyers Taylor is one of three US bobsledder players have tested positive for the virus within days of the Olympics starting.
Snowmobile racers have more than a week until their competitions begin on February 13.
Like Meyers Taylor, all infected athletes are quarantined in quarantine hotels and risk missing pre-match workouts and events.
COVID-19 has given wings to the medal dream for some Olympic athletes. Positive tests took athletes from Ukraine, Germany and Norway out of figure skating and skiing events.
In total, there were 308 positive COVID-19 test confirmed at the Olympics as of January 23, including from those arriving at the airport. Athletes and officials accounted for 111 of that total, while the other group of participants accounted for the remaining 197.
Upon arrival in Beijing, Olympic participants step into what authorities are calling “closed loop,” where they live, work, train and compete in communities without the Chinese public. Daily testing is a requirement on the strict list of COVID-19 protocols at the Olympics.
China also invited a limited number of spectators to watch the match, including diplomats, students and “winter sports enthusiasts.” In addition to muting the fandom, to limit the spread of the virus, attendees are encouraged to clap instead of cheering or singing.
And Olympic athletes and team officials who have been in Beijing’s “closed” venues are testing positive for COVID-19 at a much higher rate than others inside the venues. of the Winter Olympics.
Thursday’s positive test rate for athletes and officials inside the Olympic bubble was much higher for athletes and officials than for workers and others, according to the latest data from local organizers. Two of the 6,572 tests from the athlete-official group tested positive on Thursday; only five of the more than 64,000 daily tests from other Game participants – employees, the media and other “stakeholders” – were positive. As of January 23, the rate of positive screening tests for athletes and team officials was about 10 times higher than for other stakeholders in the bubble.
However, Olympic health officials said they Do not care on the possibility of uncontrolled spread of coronavirus into China.
Dr. Brian McCloskey, head of the Beijing 2022 medical expert panel, said at a press conference this week, both pre-departure and post-arrival testing identified those positive. That minimizes the pool of potentially infected people participating in the Olympic bubble in Beijing.
“After four or five days in a closed loop, the risk drops to the equivalent of [that of] “At that stage, they’re effectively working in a closed loop,” McCloskey said.
In his opening remarks, Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee, thanked the many medical experts and the Chinese public for making the 2022 Olympics a reality.
“In the same spirit, our hearts go out to all the athletes who because of the pandemic have been unable to make their Olympic dreams come true,” Bach said.
