Olympic Athletes and COVID

With the Olympics right around the corner and the Delta variant on the rise, we shouldn’t expect the Olympics to be the normal Summer Olympics that we always see. The Olympic Games are just a few days away, and we have already seen COVID have an impact on the Olympics. Because of COVID, we won’t be able to see some of the top athletes compete at this years games because of health and safety protocols.

The USA team, specifically, has dealt with their fair share of COVID cases right before the Olympics, preventing athletes to compete in the less than once-in-a-lifetime experience of competing at the highest level in all of sports.

Zach LaVine, Chicago Bulls and Team USA shooting guard, will not travel to Tokyo to compete with the team. CNN states, “because of health and safety protocols, USA Basketball announced Monday. No other details were released, but USA Basketball said it was hopeful LaVine will be able to join the team later this week.” It’s unclear if the reason being is that he contracted COVID or not, but it is certainly a possibility. All athletes with COVID get listed on the health and safety protocol, opening the door for that chance. It is possible that the Team USA Basketball team plays late enough, and Zach contracted COVID early enough, that he will pass it before competition. Once again, these are all speculations.

Bradley Beal, a superstar basketball player for Team USA, was also placed in the health and safety protocol and prevented from competing in the Summer Olympics.

Kara Eaker, an 18-year old gymnastics athlete, who was fully vaccinated, had multiple positive COVID tests, however, she had no symptoms. Unfortunately, she had already traveled to Tokyo with the team, and has a mandatory quarantine for the next 10 days before she is allowed to return to the United States.

Kara is not the only gymnast that tested positive for COVID recently. CNN states, “A second alternate on the gymnastics team is also in isolation after having had close contact with the athlete who tested positive, USA Gymnastics said in a statement. The second alternate has not been identified.”

A women’s basketball player, Katie Lou Samuelson, also tested positive, and was prevented from traveling with the team to Tokyo, and ultimately had her spot filled. Surely, these cases are nothing short of devastating for these athletes. They compete their whole life, train, put in blood, sweat, and tears to work for this moment, and to have it be taken away by the virus is nothing short of devastating.

Coco Gauff, an American tennis player, also tested positive last week. She will not be able to compete during this years Olympics, per her post on Instagram.

“Tokyo 2020 reported Monday that there are 61 Covid-19 cases linked to the Olympic Games,” as reported by CNN. There are 11,000 athletes at the games from all over the world, and there are 21 different hotels that are provided for the athletes. Still only about .5% of athletes have contracted the virus, but that number could easily grow given the infectiousness of the Delta virus.

So what are the Olympics doing to prevent the spread of COVID? Athletes get daily mouth swab COVID testing while they are present in Japan. Teams that have a positive test are required to put each individual athlete in their own hotel room, and can’t eat dinner with out six feet of space in between each athlete. No two athletes are allowed to face each other during team meals. Another precaution that they are taking consists of “anti-sex” beds that are made out of cardboard to try and minimize athletes spreading the virus.