This was the most important corona news of Sunday 20 February.
11:20 am – Games in Beijing: more than 1.8 million corona tests, 437 positive
More than 1.8 million corona tests during the Beijing Olympics resulted in 437 positive cases. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) took stock on the final day of the Winter Games. “The closed ‘bubble’ system was a great success,” said IOC President Thomas Bach. “Beijing was one of the safest places on Earth, if not the safest.”
Most positive tests were taken at Beijing airport. There, all foreign participants (athletes, coaches, officials and journalists) were tested on arrival. The 13,654 tests at the airport yielded 265 positive results. Anyone who had a positive result had to be placed in isolation. All participants were tested daily for corona during the Games. Those nearly 1.8 million tests yielded 172 positive results.
The 437 positive cases include 98 athletes and 87 team officials. The other 252 cases are other ‘stakeholders’, as the IOC describes it.
10:00 am – TeamNL remains free of corona during the Olympic Games: ‘Very happy’
Chef de mission Carl Verheijen is happy that the Dutch sports team managed to keep the corona virus out of the Olympic Games. “We applied a strict policy, beforehand and also here in China. That did cause some stress. On the other hand, we noticed that everyone fell off after four or five days. As the Netherlands, we have excelled there and have we performed well”, according to the chef de mission of TeamNL. “I’m very happy and proud that none of us tested positive.”
Of the 42 athletes in the Netherlands, one went home early. Skier Adriana Jelinkova tested positive in January and was inconvenienced in China. She only heard late that she could start in giant slalom because she still had a critical ct value (the value that indicates whether or not someone is infected with the corona virus). This caused her a lot of stress and she decided to skip the slalom.
The organizers of the Olympic Games expressed satisfaction with the conduct of the event in Beijing shortly before the closing ceremony, despite the restrictions due to the corona virus.