The International Olympic Committee has urged Olympic teams to request more Chinese vaccines ahead of the 2022 Beijing Winter Games, which will be held in the country where the epidemic of coronavirus has begun.
The IOC first announced a vaccine deployment program with Chinese authorities for athletes and officials in March. Chinese vaccines were purchased by the IOC and also made available to delegations to the Tokyo Olympics from countries that had approved their use.
About 100 countries are likely to participate in the Beijing Olympics, which will open on February 4. There were 205 national teams in Tokyo. Vaccination is encouraged, but not compulsory.
“I would like to encourage National Olympic Committees who need additional doses of vaccines […] to inform our NOC relations department as soon as possible to enable us to put the necessary measures in place, ”revealed IOC President Thomas Bach in a letter to the Olympic teams.
Health officials in China announced this week that more than 1 billion people, or 72% of the country’s 1.4 billion citizens, had been fully immunized.
The Beijing Games should nevertheless be organized according to the same health security measures as those applied for the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Bach noted “the excellent cooperation we enjoy with our Chinese partners and friends, as well as with the relevant Chinese health authorities. ”
Although Bach’s letter referred to the “athletes of these Olympics who will send this message of the unifying power of sport to the world,” but he did not highlight the global concerns about human rights issues in China .
Activists have tried to call them the “Genocide Games” because of China’s detention of the Uyghur Muslim minority in prison camps in Xinjiang province.
Bach has always said that the IOC is a politically neutral sports organization that cannot address issues that even the United Nations has not solved.
His letter was published the day organizers in Beijing unveiled their Games slogan “Together, towards a common future”.
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