Covid-19 contaminations at highest three weeks before Winter Olympics

AT three weeks of the Winter Olympics on its soil, it is a record that China would do without. The number of Covid-19 cases reached its highest level since March 2020 in the country on Monday, January 17. Some 223 new cases were reported, including 80 in the port city of Tianjin, and nine others, including cases from Omicron, in Guangzhou in the south of the country.

Another 68 cases have been reported in the central province of Henan, where partial containment measures and a massive testing campaign have been put in place for several million residents. Zhuhai, on the border with Macau, asked residents to avoid leaving the city after detecting a handful of Omicron cases and began testing across the city from Monday. Schools have been closed. Meanwhile, in the historic city of Xi’an, in the north of the country, new infections have slowed sharply after almost a month of confinement.

Athletes and representatives have already started arriving in the capital ahead of the Games, immediately entering a tightly controlled bubble that separates them entirely from the rest of the population. Beijing now requires a negative test before travel and a follow-up test after arrival, with residents urged not to leave the city during the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday.