The Asian Games in Hangzhou in September has been postponed indefinitely, organizers said on Friday, as China grapples with a resurgence of Covid cases.
No reason was given for the delay, but China Kovid-19 is in the race to end its biggest outbreak since the initial days of the pandemic.
“The Olympic Council of Asia has announced that the 19th Asian Games, originally scheduled to be held in Hangzhou, China, from September 10 to 25, 2022, will be postponed,” a statement on the official Games website said. Media.
The new dates for the sporting event will be announced later, the statement said.
The host city of Hangzhou is located less than 200 kilometers (120 mi) from the country’s largest city. ShanghaiWhich has ended a week-long lockdown as part of the ruling Communist Party’s zero-tolerance approach to the virus.
Organizers said last month that Hangzhou, a city with a population of 12 million in eastern China, had completed construction of about 56 competition venues for the Asian Games and the Asian Para Games.
At the time, he indicated that he planned to hold the events under a virus control plan that “learns from the successful experience” of the Beijing Winter Olympics, which were held in February in a strict COVID-safe bubble.
Hangzhou was on course to become the third city in China to host the continental competition, after Beijing in 1990 and Guangzhou in 2010.
Some events were scheduled to be held in other provincial cities, including Ningbo, Wenzhou, Huzhou, Shaoxing and Jinhua.
Almost all international sport has come to a halt in China since the outbreak of Covid in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019.
The Beijing Olympics was an exception, but was held in a strict “closed loop”, involving athletes, staff, volunteers and the media, taking daily COVID tests and not allowing the wider public to venture in.
China sticks to a zero-Covid policy, enforcing strict lockdowns, quarantines and massive testing programs, while other countries restart as the pandemic threatens.
The government has presented this strategy as evidence that it values human life above material concerns and can avert the public health crises seen in many Western countries.
Top leaders on Thursday again vowed to “unwaveringly” adhere to zero-Covid measures and “fight resolutely” against criticism of the policy despite growing public outrage against the measures.
The anger is particularly pointed in Shanghai, where since March 25 million people have sowed under a patchwork of lockdowns amid complaints of excessive lockdown measures and spartan quarantine conditions.