We tend to forget it, unless you are a biathlete or a skeleton fan, but the Beijing Winter Olympics are approaching. And China acknowledged on Tuesday that the new Omicron variant would mean additional difficulties for the organization of the event scheduled between February 4 and 20, 2022.
“This will certainly bring some challenges in terms of fighting the epidemic,” Zhao Lijian, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, conceded at a press conference. “But China has experience in this area and I am fully convinced that the Winter Olympics will go smoothly and as planned. “
The country has largely controlled the epidemic on its soil thanks to draconian measures: very strong limitation of international flights, compulsory quarantine on arrival, massive screenings or even isolation of contact cases, identified thanks to travel tracking applications. He has reported in recent weeks of a few dozen new daily cases of Covid-19. The Omicron variant has not yet been detected there, except in the autonomous territory of Hong Kong.
Bubble games
While the Chinese borders have been practically closed since March 2020, the Beijing Games will take place in a health bubble from which the some 2,900 expected athletes will not be able to get out. They must either be vaccinated or undergo a 21-day quarantine upon arrival. All will be screened daily. Only spectators residing in China will be able to attend the events.
“Regarding the Omicron variant, China has done the right thing in terms of technological readiness,” said Tuesday at a separate press conference Xu Wenbo, specialist in viral diseases of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention . “We have many options that have been launched, with inactivated vaccines, recombinant protein vaccines, and viral vector vaccines that are in the early stages of research. Anyway, the Beijing Winter Olympics will be under cover, like those in Tokyo last summer.