“Are paranoid” – athletes see flights to Beijing as a corona vulnerability
Status: 1:38 p.m | Reading time: 3 minutes
More and more athletes are traveling to the Winter Olympics in Beijing. The Corona requirements are strict. Despite this, the number of positive cases among the arrivals is increasing. The concerns of those who want to follow in the next few days are growing.
Dhe fear of a corona infection is increasingly becoming a decisive factor before the start of the Winter Olympics in Beijing. According to some athletes and coaches, entering China is the major weakness.
“We don’t yet have the Learjet that will pick us up in the Engadin without outside contact. We get on a plane to China with many other athletes from sports where it is perhaps not taken quite so precisely at one point or another. Consequently, this is a moment of danger,” said cross-country team boss Peter Schlickenrieder.
The figure skating couple Minerva Hase and Nolan Seegert are also accompanied by worries and uncertainty. “We’re trying to get to China without Corona,” said Seegert in the podcast of the Berlin Olympic base and the “Berliner Morgenpost”, “we don’t want to describe anything yet.”
On Monday they will start from their training location in Sochi, Russia, in the direction of Beijing, where the Berliners want to start their competition on the opening day next Friday. The two athletes travel to China with double FFP2 mask protection. “We have the feeling that we are even safer,” said Hase. Seegert added: “We’ve become very paranoid.” Only after arriving in the “Olympic bubble” do the German champions expect the uncertainty to disappear.
Athletes separated from population
A strict corona security concept applies to the Winter Games, and all participants – from athletes to journalists – are completely separated from the rest of the Chinese population. In order to detect infections as quickly as possible, each participant within the “Olympic bubble” must take a daily PCR test. Anyone who has contracted the virus will be isolated in a specially designated hotel. Only after two negative PCR tests at least 24 hours apart can those affected leave the facility again.
The People’s Republic of China is pursuing a strict “zero Covid” strategy, in which even smaller strands of infection are being combated with tough measures. In the past few weeks, the authorities have imposed lockdowns in several cities in the country.
Support for this comes from Germany, at least from the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB). “These strict measures are good so that everyone stays healthy. I think that’s absolutely necessary,” DOSB President Thomas Weikert told the Augsburger Allgemeine. “We now know, because there was a positive case in the support staff upon arrival, that the tests are going well.”
36 additional infected
Weikert assured that the criticized conditions in the Chinese accommodations – especially in the quarantine hotels – had improved. “We also know that the quarantine hotel is good now,” he said. “We had addressed the conditions at the test competitions and then had a video conference with the Chinese Minister of Sports, in which he surprisingly said that it was not good and would not happen again.”
On Saturday it became known that despite the strict measures, 36 additional Covid-infected people were discovered among the participants. As the organizing committee in Beijing announced, 29 people entering the country tested positive for the virus shortly after arriving at the airport, 19 of whom are said to be athletes or team members. Seven other infections were also found among people who were already inside the “Olympic bubble”.