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Writer's pictureDonald Hamilton

1st COVID-19 case detected among Beijing Olympic participants


The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics are less than two weeks away in China , which is already petrified and extra cautious when it comes to COVID-19. The first positive case was reported today, the organization committee reported Monday with just 11 days until the games open. Kyodo News mentioned that the organization committee did not identify the individual who tested positive or their nationality.


The undisclosed team member wasn’t the only who tested positive, as three stakeholders also tested positive on a day that saw 153 athletes and coaches as well as 376 stakeholders land at the airport, according to Kyodo News https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2022/01/6a4dfee0e792-urgent-1st-covid-19-case-detected-among-delegations-for-beijing-olympics.html . Two of them tested positive in the strict Olympic “bubble” Beijing is enforcing to keep everyone safe with community infections rapidly ascending with the Omicron variant looming.


In China, people who test positive are required to be quarantined for a whopping three weeks, compared to just 10 days here in the United States. The controversy doesn’t stop there though for the Olympics as Chinese female tennis star Peng Shuai claimed back in November that she had been forced by a former vice premier into having sex during a certain period of their extramarital relationship.


The IOC claims they held online talks twice last year to resolve the issue regarding Shuai, but concerns have yet to be dispelled that she has been detained by Chinese authorities, according to Kyodo News.


With the Shuai sexual assault case, the fear of COVID cases rising, and even diplomatic boycotts of the Olympics by the United States and other democratic countries, such as Britain and Australia over China’s human rights record, have put a massive target on whether or not these Olympics should even begin. Whatever happens, the Olympic Committee must do their diligence in making sure everyone is safe so that there can even be an Olympics.


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