Belgian Olympian Kim Meylemans cries over COVID isolation in Beijing

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BEIJING — After 80 hours in the purgatory of false positives feared by many Olympic athletes, Kim Meyleman thought his nightmare was over. The Belgian skeletal athlete had spent three days in isolation here in Beijing, testing the negative effects over and over again. It turned out that an initial positive result was a mistake. On Wednesday, the government announced that she could simply leave. An emergency vehicle came to pick her up. She thought he would take her back to the Olympic Village.

“We didn’t go to the Village,” she says, visibly shaken.

Instead, as Meylemans detailed through tears in a video posted to Instagram Wednesday night, she was taken to another isolation facility. The thought of staying there another seven days tore her apart. “I’m not even sure I will ever be allowed to return to the Village,” she said in between sniffles and emotional pauses. She wasn’t sure she could take it much longer.

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A post shared via Kim Meylemans (@kimmeylemans)

Late at night, as his video was being released, Olympic officials intervened. A knock on Meylemans’ door brought relief. Shortly before midnight, they escorted her back to the village. Once settled, she said she felt “safe. “

Her ordeal, however, highlighted the intellectual and emotional nature of China’s zero-COVID strategy and the Olympic protocols it influenced.

These protocols require athletes to undergo a series of PCR tests before and after arriving in Beijing, even if they have recently recovered from COVID, and although PCR tests can come back positive long after an individual has finished the contagious phase of their infection.

Experts have warned that overly strict regulations may simply “disqualify other people for no intelligent reason” or impose unnecessary strain on others. The Meylemans have become the control case they imagined. He had contracted COVID a month ago and had recovered. He had missed the World Cup skeleton races, but slipped again. She said she had been “checked almost every day since then” and that almost every A world famous doctor would say that she is no longer able to spread the virus.

Then she arrived in Beijing. Of three COVID tests, she said, one came back negative, another a “close call,” and another positive.

The positive, of course, is the product of virus remnants resulting from his infection a month earlier. “After 10 days, if his PCR [test] is positive, it’s just a matter of detecting dead infantrymen, remnants of the virus that was left in his system,” Bill Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt, told Yahoo Sports in December. “That doesn’t mean it’s contagious. “

That’s why PCR tests after 10 days are simply useless, Schaffner said. “It’s actively discouraged. Simply because it’s confusing.

But, in accordance with protocols imposed by China, Meylemans was excluded from the Olympic Village, far from training. He forced her to move into an isolation hotel. As her competitors searched for the Olympic track in Yanqing, a suburb of Beijing, Meylemans remained furious on a sports motorcycle and pushing herself against the wall of her hotel room.

Her experience was eerily similar to the one described by American luger Summer Britcher a few months ago. Arriving in China for a pre-Olympic festival in November, Britcher said she was “taken off” from a bus, “without saying anything. “She was taken “to a separate building” and told she had COVID. His check at the airport came back positive. The follow-up check showed it was a false positive: “I think it was remnants from when I already had COVID in August,” Britcher said. However, “even after several negative results, I was kept isolated, missed some educational sessions, and was absolutely separated from my team,” she said. “I can’t go to the gym, nothing. “

“I’m a little worried about what will happen when we go back,” Britcher said.

Behind the scenes, Olympic officials have been pushing to calm considerations and push for looser protocols to be put in place. In some cases, they have been successful, for example in raising the threshold of what would be a positive test.

However, there were unscientific rules, such as the one that treats Meylemans as a “close contact,” despite not having any close contact with anyone who has tested positive for the virus and almost actually not being able to eliminate significant amounts of the virus. virus itself.

And so, as a “close contact”, she will continue to live alone, eating alone, alone, deprived of anything resembling the Olympic experience.

“Although,” as Meylemans previously said on Instagram, “I have more than proven that I am perfectly healthy and pose no danger to anyone’s health. “

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