The shadow of Covid on the Beijing 2022 Olympics: "But they will take place without new measures"
The committee is optimistic: "An anti-Covid squeeze only if there are many cases in the bubble system"
The Omicron variant casts new shadows on the Beijing Winter Olympics but the games, said Huang Chun, an official of the Beijing 2022 Organizing Committee, will take place as planned "without adjusting the Covid-19 prevention measures unless there are many cases within the bubble system ".
Despite the Omicron cases, he said in an online briefing, "there are no elements to be able to say that the situation has changed".
Ahead of the Games on February 4, "whatever difficulties and challenges we may encounter, our determination to host the Games as successful as planned remains steadfast and unwavering," Committee spokesman Zhao Weidong noted.
THE PANDEMIC - In the last few hours, in the meantime, confirmation has arrived of two other cases connected to the first internal outbreak discovered in Tianjin, on the outskirts of the capital. More than 400 kilometers away, the new infections were found in Anyang, Henan, including one related to a university student who returned from Tianjin on December 28.
For this reason, despite the tests on the 14 million residents of the port city of Tianjin concluded in just 48 hours, new surprises have been put into the account for the immediate future with 76,000 people already in quarantine. The tabloid Global Times has estimated 100,000 regular commuters commuting daily between the two cities for business purposes based on 2020 data - a potential pandemic bomb against which Beijing has raised its alert and defenses. The Center for Disease Prevention and Control advised residents of the capital not to visit Tianjin, urging work from home.
Since Sunday evening, train tickets between the two cities about 150 kilometers away can no longer be purchased online, while flights and bus services in Tianjin have been blocked, schools and universities closed.
The "zero tolerance" towards Covid has been reconfirmed by Beijing in the reading of "dynamic zeroing": for Liang Wannian, at the helm of government experts against Covid, there is no possibility "to prevent a single case, but the ability and the confidence to eliminate the epidemic quickly when one emerges. " Zhong Nanshan, the country's most famous epidemiologist, expressed optimism at a forum over the weekend: China, with over 83% of the population vaccinated against Covid, "has theoretically achieved herd immunity".
(Unioneonline / D)
