With just over two weeks to go before the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics, the Winter Olympics Organizing Committee suddenly announced on Monday (January 17) night that it would change the original policy of selling tickets to the outside world and instead organize specific spectators to go to the competition venues. Watch the game. The decision came two days after the first confirmed case of a local Omicron variant of unknown origin in Beijing.
Beijing's Haidian District on Saturday suddenly reported the first confirmed case of a local Omicron variant of unknown origin, which made the Winter Olympics organizers and the Beijing Municipal Government immediately nervous, for fear that the epidemic that rebounded in Tianjin, Henan and Shaanxi would be fully captured. Beijing has brought a major impact to the upcoming Winter Olympics.
The Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee issued an announcement on its official website on Monday evening, saying that in view of the still severe and complicated situation of epidemic prevention and control, in order to protect the health and safety of Olympic-related personnel and spectators, "it has decided to adjust the original plan to sell tickets through the public to Oriented to organize spectators to watch the game on the spot".
"The audience is required to strictly abide by the COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control requirements before, during and after watching the game, so as to create a good atmosphere for the smooth holding of the event under the premise of epidemic prevention and control," the organizing committee said on its official website. the announcement said.
The Beijing Winter Olympics was originally the most strictly controlled sporting event in history. All Olympic-related personnel, including athletes, coaches, assistants, other staff and volunteers, are under closed-loop management, and even their vehicles are completely isolated from Beijing citizens or spectators.
On September 30 last year, the Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee issued an announcement stating that it would not sell tickets to venues for the Winter Olympics to overseas audiences, but said it would sell tickets to domestic audiences who meet the relevant requirements for epidemic prevention and control.
Perhaps the epidemic has rebounded in many places in China recently, especially in Tianjin, which is a stone's throw away from Beijing, where the clustered community transmission of Omicron mutants, and the first local case of Omicron infection in Beijing. The effect forced the organizing committee to change its established ticketing policy.
When Tokyo hosted the Summer Olympics last summer, it also refused to sell tickets to foreign audiences for the venues, but local Japanese people can still buy tickets to watch the games. Therefore, the Beijing Winter Olympics will also become the first Olympic Games in history that do not sell tickets at all.
Pang Xinghuo, deputy director of the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention, revealed at a press conference on Monday that the confirmed case in Beijing had no history of living in other provinces or cities in the 14 days before the onset of the disease, and only occasionally sent and received international emails during work. Numerous environmental specimens collected from the international mail contacted by this case were all positive for nucleic acid testing, and a specific mutation site of the Omicron variant was also detected.
Pang Xinghuo also revealed that the whole genome sequencing of the confirmed case specimens showed that although the virus belongs to the Omicron variant, it is different from the previous cases in Beijing and the Omicron variant recently reported by domestic and foreign provinces and cities. It belongs to the same transmission chain; on the contrary, it is more similar to some strains isolated in North America and Singapore in December last year.
Li Ang, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Health Commission, revealed at the same press conference that Beijing Ditan Hospital currently has 15 patients infected with the new coronavirus, including 1 local case and 14 imported cases. A total of 9 cases of Omicron variant infection have been treated in Ditan Hospital, and 6 cases are currently in the hospital. However, Li Ang did not say when and where these Omicron infected people came from, nor did he explain why they had not been notified before.
Also on Monday, at a press conference on epidemic prevention and control held in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, Lin Hancheng, a second-level inspector of the Municipal Health and Health Commission, also introduced a 21-year-old female employee who was engaged in the receipt and delivery of overseas frozen reagents. He contacted and split up express delivery from North America, and did not take personal protection. He developed sore throat last Friday, and the nucleic acid test was positive on Saturday.
As both Beijing and Shenzhen reported cases of employees being infected due to contact with overseas mail, the State Post Bureau of China issued a notice on Sunday, requiring postal administrations at all levels and postal express companies to further raise awareness of risks, overcome laxity and paralysis, and effectively build international mail The epidemic prevention and control barrier of express mail is strictly prevented from entering overseas epidemics through delivery channels.
Beijing government officials also warned people to be extra careful when handling and unsealing foreign mail, especially remember to wear gloves and open mail outdoors.
However, European and American experts have always believed that the virus is difficult to spread by mail, because it is difficult for the virus to survive on objects, even the more contagious Omicron variant.