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Strict corona measures apply to athletes and employees in the athletes' villages
Photo:
IMAGO / Kyodo News
The Olympic Villages for the Winter Games in Beijing have been officially opened under strict precautionary measures due to the corona pandemic.
More than 360 athletes and team members from more than 20 countries are expected to move into the accommodations for the opening on Thursday, Chinese state television reported.
Since last week, however, athletes and advance delegations have also arrived and moved in.
The organizers decided not to hold a ceremony to open the athletes' villages.
The games should be kept “simple” as planned, a spokesman said.
Larger gatherings of people should also be avoided because of the pandemic.
Virus prevention is "the most important task" of management in the villages, emphasized the director of the administration team, Shen Qianfan.
For the Winter Games, which open on February 4th, there are three Olympic Villages at the respective venues.
They are spread over the capital, Yanqing, 75 kilometers away, and Zhangjiakou, 180 kilometers from the gates of Beijing.
Accommodation as high security zones
The accommodations, like the venues, are similar to high-security zones.
Athletes and team members are only allowed to move in hermetically »closed circuits« (closed loops) - they are thus largely cut off from their host country.
While new infections are peaking in other countries, the world's most populous country is currently reporting only
a few dozen infections a day.
According to the Health Commission, there were 25 local infections nationwide on Thursday, five of them in the 20 million metropolis of Beijing.
At the beginning of the pandemic, however, Beijing's corona statistics raised doubts.
The country is pursuing a rigorous zero-Covid strategy to fight the pandemic.
Locally limited lockdowns and mass testing are intended to bring individual corona outbreaks under control.
However, in recent weeks, large, well-connected metropolises have reported infections in quick succession.
Most recently, the authorities ordered mass testing in Beijing.
China has largely sealed itself off from abroad.
There are hardly any international flights.
Visas are only granted in exceptional cases.
The few people entering the country usually have to stay in a quarantine hotel for three weeks, which spares vaccinated Olympic participants.
But they can only move in the Olympic bubble, are transported in shielded shuttle buses from the athletes' village to the competition site, and have to be tested daily.
The same applies to thousands of Chinese employees in the athletes' villages.
According to Chinese information, they are all boosted, live in similarly isolated accommodations nearby and only move in separate buses.
External contacts are "not possible," the organizers assert.
Tickets are not sold freely
2,300 athletes and coaches will be accommodated in Beijing, 1,400 people in Yanqing, while Zhangjiakou has the largest village with around 2,700 beds.
The virus prevention goes far beyond what the participants at the Summer Games in Japan experienced "Everyone must be aware that it is not like Tokyo here," a European diplomat familiar with the security measures told the news agency dpa quoted.
Spectators from abroad are not permitted.
In addition, the tickets are not sold freely in Beijing, but only distributed officially in order to have any infections under control.
The ranks will therefore primarily be filled by employees from state-owned companies and students from universities in Beijing.
To do this, they must be boosted and demonstrate two negative PCR tests 24 hours apart within 96 hours.
Also, spectators must not have been in a place where there were infections in the two weeks before.
Controlling the issuing of tickets in this way "greatly reduces the likelihood of an outbreak," the party-affiliated newspaper Global Times quoted a Chinese epidemiologist as saying.
Otherwise it would be difficult to track viewers.
ngo/dpa