Long mandatory quarantines on arrival in the territory, targeted confinements, massive screenings, mobile applications for tracking movements and drastic limitation of international flights… Thanks to these particularly strict measures, life is almost normal in China. But this strategy is put to the test when multiple cases have arisen in the country.
The city of Beijing announced that it would screen all the inhabitants of a district on Sunday after the discovery of an epidemic focus, less than two weeks before the start of the Winter Olympics in the Chinese capital. The city reported the first case of the highly contagious Omicron variant last weekend in a person who received a letter from Canada that authorities said carried traces of the virus. The Chinese capital then suspended thousands of flights and multiplied Covid tests after registering this first case.
Xi’an city lockdown lifted on Tuesday
A second outbreak is linked to the Delta strain of the coronavirus. The district of Fengtai, located in the South of Beijing, about 20 km from the site which is to host the Olympic events in freestyle freestyle skiing and snowboarding, is concerned. Fengtai is the district where the Xinfadi market is located, which in 2020 had been the epicenter of a previous epidemic focus. Traces of virus on a cutting board of imported salmon had been discovered there.
The evolution of the number of Covid-19 cases in China.
Flourish
If you are not viewing the infographic, Click here
As a preventive measure, the approximately two million inhabitants of the district were screened on Sunday, said the municipality, which prohibits people at risk from leaving Beijing. “We must make every effort to stop the spread (of the virus) as quickly as possible, by taking firm, strict and decisive measures”, justified in front of the press an official, Xu Hejian. Since last weekend, around forty cases of Covid have been identified in Beijing, the majority are of the Delta strain.
Vaccination coverage is high in China, with only Chinese vaccines being authorized.
Flourish
If you are not viewing the infographic, Click here
About a thousand kilometers from Beijing, the city of Xi’an (North) must also lift its confinement on Tuesday, local authorities said on Saturday. The metropolis had been the epicenter of the epidemic in China at the end of December. In mid-December, it had imposed on its 13 million inhabitants the strictest quarantine measures since Wuhan (center), the first city in the world put under a bell exactly two years ago at the start of the pandemic.
A drastic health protocol
The Games will take place in an anti-Covid “sanitary bubble”, separating all participants from the rest of the population. Participants, athletes, volunteers, cooks, drivers and journalists will thus be kept in a “closed loop” to prevent any contact with the population and limit the risk of contamination. This health bubble requires a battery of measures to isolate these people from the outside world.
“We’re doing everything we can, we can’t do more. Being at the start of the Games will already be a feat!”, summarizes French skier Johan Clarey at the age of 41, less than two kick off of the Beijing Olympics. “We sleep in a single room, we try not to meet anyone, we go up alone in the (tele)cabins, we wear the FFP2 mask as often as possible”, lists the best French descender.
Their first test of the 2022 Olympics is therefore to be able to join China, which has implemented a drastic health protocol. It is indeed necessary to present two negative PCR tests within 96 hours and 72 hours of departure to be able to embark for China where the athletes, coaches and other participants will still be tested on their arrival. For those who were infected less than thirty days before their departure, they must present two additional negative tests spaced at least 24 hours apart.
And once they arrive in the “Olympic bubble” from which they will not be able to leave for the duration of their stay in China, it is not over: the tests will be daily and in the event of a positive test, it will take two tests. negative spaced at least 24 hours apart and no longer have symptoms to get out of isolation. To avoid events without spectators, invitations could however be given to a handful of vaccinated people.