Beijing (dpa) – No new corona infections occurred at the Winter Olympics in Beijing. The organizers reported that no infected people were found on Friday either among those arriving or among Olympic participants in the isolated Olympic bubble.
67,000 tests were carried out. As early as Thursday, only one arrival at Beijing Airport had tested positive. A total of 436 infections have been identified since arrival at the Winter Games began on January 23.
The games are subject to extremely strict precautions. Those involved are only allowed to move in closed circuits and are cut off from the rest of the country. Anyone who has contracted the virus will be isolated in a specially designated hotel.
“The system worked, 100 percent,” said IOC top official Juan Antonio Samaranch at the International Olympic Committee session. According to the organizers, there was no corona outbreak within the closed system. All of the cases in the lockdown bubble were due to transmissions at the airport, Samaranch said. As a maximum, 48 athletes were isolated on the day of the opening ceremony, on Saturday there were two athletes and six other people.
While at times over 30 infections per day were registered at the beginning of the games, the number of new cases recently fell into the single digits and towards zero, which the organizers see as a sign of the effectiveness of the measures taken.