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Olympic Teams Raise Concerns Over Quarantine Hotels

BEIJING — Not sufficient meals. Inedible meals. No coaching gear. Some Olympic athletes unfortunate sufficient to check optimistic for the coronavirus on the Beijing Olympics really feel their quarantine situations are making a foul scenario a lot worse.

“My abdomen hurts, I’m very pale and I’ve enormous black circles round my eyes. I would like all this to finish. I cry every single day. I’m very drained,” Russian biathlon competitor Valeria Vasnetsova posted on Instagram from considered one of Beijing’s so-called quarantine resorts.

Her downside wasn’t with any signs of the virus. It was the meals.

Vasnetsova posted an image Thursday of what she mentioned was “breakfast, lunch and dinner for 5 days already” — a tray with meals together with plain pasta, an orange sauce, charred meat on a bone, a number of potatoes and no greens.
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She mentioned she largely survived on a number of items of pasta as a result of it was “not possible” to eat the remaining, “however at present I ate all of the fats they serve as a substitute of meat as a result of I used to be very hungry.” She added she misplaced a whole lot of weight and “my bones are already protruding.”

The quarantine resorts are more and more the goal of criticism from athletes and their groups, who’re lobbying organizers for enhancements. There’s a scarcity of transparency, too, with just some virus-positive athletes compelled into quarantine resorts the place their groups don’t have entry, whereas teammates in related conditions are allowed to isolate inside the Olympic village.

The principles for athletes who take a look at optimistic say these with out signs go to a devoted resort for isolation. Anybody who has COVID-19 with signs will go to a hospital. In each instances, they’ll be unable to compete till cleared for discharge.

Groups have began going public with criticism.

After Eric Frenzel, a three-time gold medalist in Nordic mixed, examined optimistic, German delegation head Dirk Schimmelpfennig lambasted the “unreasonable” residing situations. Germany desires bigger, extra hygienic rooms, and extra common meals deliveries so athletes who’re ultimately launched are nonetheless match to compete, Schimmelpfennig mentioned in feedback reported by the FAZ newspaper.

The stress can repay. Belgian skeleton racer Kim Meylemans was introduced again from a quarantine resort to isolation within the athletes’ village after she made a tearful put up on social media. Her fundamental gripe was the ignorance. She was loaded into an ambulance and transported from one quarantine facility to a different on a day she thought she was being launched.

Vasnetsova handed her time in quarantine with a bit detective work. When fetching the meals left outdoors her door, she took a look on the bins left outdoors different rooms in her hall, whose doorways had been labeled with indicators to tell apart Olympians from different folks working on the Video games who examined optimistic, corresponding to staff workers.

She concluded the athletes had been getting worse meals, and underlined it with an image of meals served to her staff physician, who had additionally examined optimistic and was residing two flooring under. He had contemporary fruit, a salad and prawns with broccoli.

“I actually don’t perceive, why is there this perspective to us, the athletes?!” she wrote.

Two days on from her criticism, Vasnetsova remains to be in quarantine however issues are wanting up.

Russian biathlon staff spokesperson Sergei Averyanov posted an image of what he mentioned was an improved meal delivered to Vasnetsova’s room together with salmon, cucumbers, sausages and yogurt. A stationary bike will likely be delivered quickly, he added.

Vasnetsova, he wrote, “is already smiling, and that’s the primary factor.”

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Extra AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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