FISU is confident in holding the Chengdu 2022 World University Games despite the current outbreaks of COVID-19 in China

The organizers of the World University Games in Chengdu, China, trust in the successful celebration of the mega-event in three months time, despite the outbreak of COVID-19 in China.

The World University Games will begin in 93 days in the capital city of Sichuan province in southwestern China, where the number of COVID-19 infections reported in the last week is very low.

China, which applies a severe “zero tolerance” policy towards coronavirus, is going through a wave of outbreaks attributed to the Omicron variant which is causing numbers of infections not seen since the start of the pandemic in the first half of 2020.

This rise in cases has forced China to pull out of hosting several sporting events, including the World Weightlifting Championship in November.

Likewise, Around The Rings has learned the Chinese women’s softball team withdrew from the World Games tournament in the United States next July. The source cited movement restrictions in China due to COVID-19 as the reason for that decision.

Puerto Rico will replace China in this contest, alongside Japan, the United States, Australia, Canada, Italy, Mexico and Chinese Taipei.

This Friday it was learned the 2022 Yangling Marathon, scheduled for April 10, has been postponed “due to the prevention and control of COVID-19″, according to Xinhua.

A new date will be announced later according to the organizers. Yangling is an agricultural high-tech industrial demonstration zone in northwest China’s Shaanxi Province. The Yangling Marathon, which was first held in 2015, attracted 20,000 runners from home and abroad in 2019.

The event was postponed and then canceled in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic before resuming in 2021.

To questions from ATR, Jing Zhao, Director of the Summer University Games at the International Federation of University Sports (FISU), expressed her hopes the current epidemiological situation will not affect the celebration of the international student games.

“We don’t think so. FISU is working together with the Organizing Committee preparing contingency plans in extreme cases, but the event must be guaranteed,” Zhao said in an email.

She confirmed the sanitary protocols applied will be similar to those successfully followed during the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Beijing, last February and March.

“But they could be adjusted based on the actual situation by then,” Zhao clarified. The World University Games are scheduled between June 26 and July 7.

“There will be strict management in a closed circuit with a daily PCR test for all accredited participants,” the FISU official told ATR.

FISU has initially registered some 90 countries and more than 6,000 athletes. That total does not include any Russian or Belarusian athletes and officials. They have been banned from the Games and will not participate in any FISU competitions and activities “until at least the end of 2022.”

They have previously canceled two World University Cups in Russia and one World University Championship in Belarus, scheduled for 2022.

The Chinese National Health Commission announced this Friday the detection of 1,366 new positives for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, 1,301 due to local contagion and the rest imported.

The places with the highest numbers of infections were Jilin (northeast, 1,110), Shanghai (east, 27), Tianjin (northeast, 25) and Hebei (north, 24).

Health authorities also reported the detection of 3,622 asymptomatic cases, 3,489 by local contagion, although China does not count them as confirmed cases unless they show symptoms.

The total number of active infections in mainland China amounts to 26,892, 50 of whom are serious.

At the same time mass vaccination is across the country is increasing. More than 212 million people over the age of 60 have completed their two-shot vaccination course against COVID-19, and more than 138 million also received a booster shot, according to Chinese health authorities.