China determined to avoid virus outbreak during 2022 Olympics

Winter athletes will be shut off amid strict border controls

China is leaving nothing to chance to prevent a coronavirus outbreak during the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics this February.

A handbook released Monday describes how athletes will be confined to a “closed loop” of hotels, venues and designated buses, shut off from the rest of the country to a degree far beyond measures adopted during the Tokyo Summer Games.

To enter the bubble, participants need to either be vaccinated or do 21 days of quarantine. Once inside, swab tests are conducted daily. There is an app to ensure “responsibility from start to finish,” where anyone involved in the Games must report their temperature and test results from 14 days before arrival to two weeks after leaving China.

As the second anniversary of the coronavirus’s discovery in Wuhan approaches, China has shown no sign of abandoning its efforts to eliminate infections, even as nations like Singapore and Australia that once shared a similar approach begin to open borders and shift toward mitigation of outbreaks now that they have achieved high vaccination rates.

For Beijing, the experience of other nations may prove more of a cautionary tale than an example to follow. “The Chinese government is keeping a close eye on what is happening overseas to work out whether giving up a ‘zero COVID’ policy requires accepting a spike in cases,” said Huang Yanzhong, a senior fellow for global public health at the Council on Foreign Relations. “That prospect is not acceptable for China.”

China is partially a victim of its own success, because it has built so much support for its elimination policy that no community spread is now expected. Even a limited border opening could be unpopular if it causes a jump in cases, Huang said.

Any decision to end “zero COVID” is politically laden for President Xi Jinping as he prepares for a crucial twice-per-decade political meeting in late 2022, when he is expected to break with the precedent of his immediate predecessors to stay on for a third term in office.

State media has highlighted the Chinese Communist Party’s ability to halt transmission of the coronavirus as evidence of the superiority of the country’s political system and the direction it has taken under Xi.

Even with strict border controls, China continues to face challenges to its containment strategy. On Sunday, the National Health Commission warned that the country’s third widespread outbreak of the more-transmissible delta variant in recent months would probably continue to spread due to the onset of winter.

Although the outbreak remains relatively small 50 new locally transmitted cases reported on Wednesday brought the total to just over 200 — the cases have been found in at least 11 provinces, mostly among tour groups that traveled during the National Day holiday.