International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach confirmed that the Chinese Olympic Committee has offered to make COVID-19 vaccine doses available to participants at both the Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022 Olympic Games on Thursday during Day 2 of the 137th IOC Session.
On Tuesday, SwimSwam reported on how the Chinese government stated its willingness to help the IOC with athlete vaccinations, and now Bach has confirmed the offer is on the table.
“The IOC has received a kind offer from the Chinese Olympic Committee, the host of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games,” Bach said, as reported by Inside The Games.
“The offer is to make additional vaccine doses available to participants for Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022. The Chinese Olympic Committee is ready in cooperation with the IOC to make these additional doses available in two ways. Either via collaboration with international partners or directly in the numerous countries where agreements regarding Chinese vaccines are already in place.
“The IOC will pay for these additional doses of vaccines for the Olympic and Paralympic team. For each of these additional doses, the IOC will also pay for two doses more that can be made available to population in that country.”
Bach, who was officially re-elected as IOC President on the first day of the IOC Session, also said that a significant number of Olympic teams have already received vaccinations in line with their national guidelines.
For more information from Day 2 of the 137th IOC Session, click here.
A very good article outlining the global Vaccine situation , Global Equity , Covax ,market hogging & which includes Chinese vaccines = NBC 26 Feb 2021. Its the best route away of being a vaccine bigot.
Re the Olympics , if these nations accept the offer , what is it to you ? Are you somehow hurt or offended ?
Of course they do… China pulled the oldest trick in the book… create a problem, offer the solution
Mmm what’s the motive behind this??
I wonder………
I can think of two motives, and neither has anything to do with Sun Yang, which has been suggested in these comments several times:
1) buying goodwill to distract from the situation with the Uhygur people.
2) it has the potential to be a massive advertisement for the Chinese pharmaceutical industry, which could be a giant boon for their economy.
2.1) distract from whatever they’re doing in/with Hong Kong
2.2) wanting to rewrite history and make up for the fact that they tried to hide the enormity of the covid outbreak in the early stages and significantly contributed to the severity of the problem we now have.
Free vaccines In exchange for what ?? Sun Yang competing perhaps ?
The IOC doesn’t really get a say in that. They can apply soft pressure to the CAS and WADA, but they’d have to be absolutely perfect in that application or it would absolutely destroy the IOC.
(It seems unlikely that China would even ask the IOC for this. They’re smart enough to understand the implications of that).
Not worth it now. Sun may have one more gold in him if he was allowed to compete but his trajectory has been downward for sometime regardless of the scandals.
Well as long as the vaccine vials don’t get smashed on the way to the athletes lol