It was already known that foreign visitors would be banned from the stadium during the Beijing Olympics, the organizing committee announced a few days ago that Chinese spectators will also have to follow the events on television, due to an epidemic situation “complicated” explain the authorities.
Less than a week before the first events, the subject here is not the Olympics, assures Yoan Gandin, foreign language trainer-didactician at Peking University and settled in China since 2007, but the Covid pandemic -19.
“They are trying to secure the city as much as possible, especially at the health level. We are still in the policy of zero cases. Officially, we are very far from current European statistics, but we radically close neighborhoods as soon as a case appears, that disrupts everyone’s daily life.”
Yoan Gandin, settled in China since 2007at franceinfo
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The timing is indeed very bad for the country, which had succeeded in stemming the circulation of the virus since the initial crisis in Wuhan at the end of 2019. In this pandemic context, the organizers have deployed a fleet of robots for many tasks. Some are thus capable of carrying up to 300 kilos of equipment and products which they will then distribute or deposit within the confines of the “Bird nest”the capital’s Olympic stadium, to avoid contact.
The entire area has been cordoned off by 200 km of barriers, forming a health bubble where athletes, journalists, sports executives and Olympics employees will have to remain confined, sealed off from the Chinese population. And in the press canteen, meals will descend from the ceiling, a scene worthy of an episode of the hit British sci-fi series BlackMirror.
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The official website of the 2022 Beijing Olympics
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