Beijing Winter Olympics tickets won’t be sold to public as Omicron surges

Solely “chosen” spectators will probably be invited to attend the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing resulting from security issues over the Omicron variant, officers introduced on Monday.

The Beijing Winter Olympics Group Committee introduced in an announcement that tickets received’t be bought to the general public “given the present grave and complex state of affairs of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Officers mentioned they might as a substitute “invite teams of spectators to be current on-site” throughout Olympic occasions, that are set to start on Feb. 4.

Previous to the change, Olympic organizers had already restricted gross sales to people primarily based in mainland China.

The Worldwide Olympic Committee confirmed the ticket coverage in a separate assertion.

Officers in Beijing have introduced that tickets to the Winter Olympics, which begin on February 4, 2022, is not going to go on sale to the general public.

Fu Tian/China Information Service by way of Getty Pictures

A customer taking photographs of an ice sculpture for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic and Paralympic Video games in Beijing.

STR/AFP by way of Getty Pictures

The choice got here after the primary locally-transmitted case of the Omicron variant was confirmed over the weekend in Beijing.

China has enacted strict well being measures forward of the Olympics, together with a requirement that vacationers take a COVID-19 check inside 72 hours of arrival in Beijing. The testing coverage begins on Jan. 22 and can keep in impact by means of March.

The change in ticket coverage marked the most recent signal of hassle for this 12 months’s Olympics. Except for issues associated to the COVID-19 pandemic, the worldwide neighborhood has pushed again on the choice to permit China to host the video games given allegations of ongoing human rights abuses.

Genting Snow Park, a contest venue for Snowboarding and Freestyle Snowboarding in the course of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics.

REUTERS/Pawel Kopczynski/File Picture

The announcement comes after the primary locally-transmitted case of the Omicron variant was confirmed over the weekend in Beijing.

olympics.com

The Biden administration has enacted a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing video games, although American athletes will nonetheless be permitted to take part. US-based company sponsors have additionally confronted stress to behave, although none have dropped out of taking part thus far.