Athletes and Coaches Are Testing Positive at Higher Rates Than Others Arriving for Beijing Olympics

(BEIJING) — Athletes and group officers are testing constructive for COVID-19 at a lot increased charges than different individuals arriving in China for the Beijing Olympics, organizers stated Tuesday.

Figures launched by native organizers confirmed 11 constructive checks for COVID-19 amongst 379 athletes and officers arriving Monday. They’ve been taken into isolation lodges to restrict the unfold of the an infection and will miss their occasions.

The constructive take a look at price of two.9% for athletes and officers in comparison with 0.66% for Olympic “stakeholders,” a gaggle which incorporates employees and media, in the identical interval. There have been 1,059 individuals in that class.
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Over a three-day interval from Saturday via Monday, the positivity price for athletes and officers was 40% increased than different Olympic arrivals.

The charges have been confirmed in PCR and different follow-up checks for tens of hundreds of individuals on the Beijing Olympics who will dwell, work and prepare in closed-off communities separated from most of the people. The Chinese language authorities is pursuing a zero-tolerance public well being technique.

On Monday, the speed of an infection from checks of these already contained in the Olympic bubbles was 100 instances increased for athletes and officers in comparison with employees. 5 of three,103 checks from the athletes-officials group have been constructive in comparison with solely certainly one of greater than 60,000 each day checks from “stakeholders.”

A complete of 200 constructive checks for COVID-19 have now been recorded on the Olympics since Jan. 23. Of these 200, 67 have been athletes and officers. “Stakeholders” accounted for the opposite 133.

Among the many athletes testing constructive in Beijing is Hong Kong skier Audrey King, who arrived from a coaching camp in Bosnia-Herzegovina. King advised the South China Morning Submit she had no signs and was optimistic of snowboarding within the ladies’s slalom on Feb. 9.

Essentially the most senior athlete consultant on the Worldwide Olympic Committee, two-time Olympic hockey medalist Emma Terho, is also in an isolation lodge after testing constructive on arrival.

“Although this isn’t the beginning I envisaged, I used to be joyful to see the protocols that Beijing 2022 has put in place are working effectively,” Terho, an IOC member from Finland who sits on the Olympic physique’s govt board, wrote on her Instagram account.