Winter Olympics: what health measures does China intend to apply?


Sébastien Le Belzic, edited by Solène Delinger
, modified at

6:26 a.m., December 27, 2021

The Olympic Winter Games will open in just 40 days in Beijing. This event, of great importance for the Chinese capital, promises to be very complicated to organize because of calls for a boycott and especially of the pandemic, with a resumption of cases in China, at the highest for four months.

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The Olympic Games once again disrupted by the pandemic. In 40 days, the Winter Olympics will open in Beijing. This event, which is very important for the Chinese capital, promises to be particularly complicated to organize because of the epidemic resumption in China, where the number of cases has been increasing for four months.

No one will be able to get out

All the participants in the Beijing Games will evolve in a closed loop. A health bubble even more airtight than at the Tokyo Games, since they will be completely isolated from the rest of the country. If in Japan journalists could leave the bubble after two weeks and mingle with the locals, in Beijing no one will be able to get out.

Accommodation, meals and travel between the three competition areas, sometimes 200 kilometers apart, will be within this loop. Another difference with Tokyo: all participants must be vaccinated and screened daily.

A limited number of spectators

If the Tokyo Games were held in empty stadiums, spectators will be allowed in Beijing, but their numbers will be limited and none may come from abroad. The organizers will however ensure that the public does not mix with the athletes and the delegations. And those residing in China will even have to undergo a quarantine when they exit the bubble to return home.

In addition to the pandemic, which complicates the organization of these Olympics, the call to boycott several countries embarrasses Beijing. The United States, Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada announced their decision to boycott the event because of the “genocide and crimes against humanity underway in Xinjiang against Uyghur Muslims.” For its part, France should send its Minister for Sports, Roxana Maracineanu.

China has warned that the four Western countries boycotting the Olympics will “pay the price”.



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