Covid-19 contact-tracing measures and a packed Olympics schedule mean one positive test could risk knocking entire squads from competition
The biggest risk for any country in the Olympic Games in Tokyo this summer is that a single athlete tests positive for the novel coronavirus, but some or all of their team is deemed a close contact—taking everyone out of competition.
And the biggest problem is that there aren’t many ways for a country to stop that from happening, leaving a threat that looms over everyone, including the U.S. women’s gymnastics team, Kenyan marathoners, Serbian basketballers and the Jamaican track squad. Tokyo’s tight schedule of 339 Olympic events over 19 days leaves no room for postponement.
An early warning of the possibility of one Covid-positive athlete taking down others came from the Dutch gymnastics delegation late last week. All gymnasts and staff had been vaccinated, a spokesperson for their sports federation said. One of them nonetheless tested positive shortly ahead of their planned departure to Japan.
The result was that the entire men’s and women’s teams stayed grounded in the Netherlands. Everybody was tested again. Nobody else came back with a positive test, and the men’s team, which was not deemed to include any close contacts, departed for Tokyo on Sunday. The women’s team, the spokesperson said, is continuing to train individually in Heerenveen, with frequent testing, and will leave for Tokyo on Wednesday if all the results remain negative.
Since the onset of the global coronavirus pandemic, the virus has been a wily foe for anyone trying to operate sports around it, with the possibility of silent, airborne transmission from people with no obvious symptoms, and an incubation period of up to 14 days.
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