In terms of a public coup for China and a solution to a problem for the International Olympic Committee, IOC President Thomas Bach announced Thursday that China has agreed to provide coronavirus vaccines for any participant in need of one. before Tokyo of the summer in Tokyo. Olympic Games and next year’s Winter Games in Beijing.
Bach said the Olympic Committee will cover the cost of the vaccines for all Olympic and Paralympic competitors who need them, and that distribution will take place through existing international agencies. It is unknown at this time what he will do after leaving the post. a the national vaccination program is still in its early stages – the payout for the IOC will be incalculable.
Thursday’s announcement by Bach, who was elected a day earlier to a new four-year term, will help the IOC resolve a sensitive issue, which was one of many questions hanging over the Tokyo Games: how to ensure that thousands of visitors to Japan from around the world will be vaccinated when they arrive, and how to do so without making it seem appropriate, young, elite athletes and their teams have jumped on the bandwagon, while the global death toll from coronavirus continues to grow.
For China, the agreement with the IOC – which will include two vaccines for the general population in an athlete’s home country for each Olympic participant – could help ease the growing public scrutiny and criticism of the country’s human rights record before the next years to deduce. year’s Beijing Winter Games.
While China has put aside any talk of losing its Games, activists have focused on stripping Hong Kong of its promised democratic freedoms and the massive incarceration of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang. In January, the US government said the forced detention of Uighurs amounted to ‘genocide’.
Bach gave little detail about the program, the amount of vaccine obtained or the potential cost. This is probably not a significant figure for the sports organization that has promoted closer ties with China under Bach. In 2015, China stepped in to save Olympic officials in a difficult place with an offer to host the 2022 Winter Games, after the IOC collapsed a series of bids amid growing public opposition. More recently, Chinese companies have agreed to cooperate with the Olympic movement and commit millions of dollars in support.
In recent months, China has also made vaccines a tool for its foreign policy, and sometimes exported precious doses, even though it still needs tens of millions of them at home. It has approved four vaccines, and all are in domestic or foreign use. The country produces single and dual dose vaccines, but in trials each has yielded different degrees of efficacy.
Bach said the offer for vaccines was made by the Chinese Olympic Committee and confirmed the vague statements he made earlier this year about securing vaccine doses ahead of the Games.
“The offer is to make additional vaccine doses available to participants for Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022,” Bach said in a speech at the IOC’s annual meeting on Thursday.
“The Chinese Olympic Committee, in collaboration with the IOC, is ready to make these additional doses available in two ways: either through cooperation with international partners, or directly in the many countries where agreements have already been reached on Chinese vaccines.”
Bach stressed that the IOC would also pay the extra doses for the general population of countries that need its help.
A growing number of countries, a group as diverse as India, Hungary and Israel, have already announced that they will push their Olympians to the forefront of their vaccination lines. Mexico’s president this month placed his country’s athletes along with medical workers and teachers in a priority group. Lithuania moved even faster; it started administering vaccines to its Olympians weeks ago.