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Josephine Ma

The number of Covid-19 cases related to the Winter Olympics has risen to 106, with nine more arrivals testing positive at the airport in host city Beijing.
All nine are in the category of “other stakeholders”, which usually refers to the media and Games partners.
Other stakeholders accounted for 98 per cent of cases discovered since January 4, with just one athlete and a team official among the 106 found infected out of some 3,000 arrivals.
This comes as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Monday eased the PCR test threshold for Covid-19 positive cases – lowering the CT value cut-off from 40 to 35 – and also modified the definition of close contacts. Some athletes have complained about Beijing’s strict zero-case bubble.


Days before the Winter Games open on February 4, Beijing has imposed extreme restrictions on movement to protect the Olympic bubble.
Contact between Games participants and the Beijing public is strictly forbidden, with passers-by barred from helping even if an Olympic vehicle crashes.
After a recent outbreak sparked weeks of mass testing and quarantine, Beijing authorities on Wednesday said there had not been any Omicron case locally for three days in a row.
All new Covid-19 cases reported between Tuesday and Wednesday involved the Delta variant, officials said. This includes six symptomatic cases and two asymptomatic ones. Local cases are counted separately from the Olympic tallies.
Since the latest outbreak from January 15, Beijing has reported a total of six Omicron cases and 69 of the Delta variant.
City authorities have blamed virus-tainted international mail for causing the Omicron clusters, and traced the Delta infections to cold chain facilities.
Canadian letter claimed to be potential source of Beijing Omicron infection
All eight new positive cases on Tuesday were detected among close contacts serving quarantine. Five of them work for the Xinanjiao cold storage, where an outbreak was reported.
China is the only country actively pushing the theory that international mail and cold storage facilities could be a source of Covid-19 transmission, with customs and health authorities ordered to disinfect food imports and international mail.


Tang Yunhua, deputy director of Beijing’s markets regulation body, said authorities had tested environmental samples from catering operators, supermarkets, restaurants and wet markets, but none returned positive results.
Jin Tonghua, president of Beijing’s Ditan infectious diseases hospital, said 100 Covid-19 patients were currently receiving treatment there – 73 of them local cases and the rest imported. Most had mild symptoms.
However, despite the decline in case numbers, the deputy director of Beijing’s disease prevention and control centre, Pang Xinghuo, continued to describe the war against Covid-19 as “complicated and severe” – as China’s top leadership doubled down on delivering a coronavirus-safe Winter Games.
Xi meets IOC chief in first face-to-face talks with foreign dignitary in 2 years
Elsewhere, Hangzhou in China’s eastern Zhejiang province reported an Omicron case on Wednesday. Around 1,300 close and secondary contacts have been identified.
City authorities said the case was identified in a fever clinic, and the strain isolated was different from previous local and imported cases there.
Sporadic local cases were also reported in Heilongjiang, Hebei and Guangdong provinces and the Xinjiang region.



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Beijing Winter Games 2022


Nine arrivals test positive at Beijing airport, days after IOC eases negative result threshold
No locally transmitted Omicron cases for three straight days in city



Nine arrivals test positive at Beijing airport, days after IOC eases negative result threshold.


Coronavirus pandemic

Coronavirus pandemic: All stories

Coronavirus China

Beijing Winter Games: Covid-19 cases in Olympic bubble rise to 106

Nine arrivals test positive at Beijing airport, days after IOC eases negative result threshold No locally transmitted Omicron cases for three straight days in city

Nine arrivals test positive at Beijing airport, days after IOC eases negative result threshold

No locally transmitted Omicron cases for three straight days in city