An analysis of the Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022 safety protocols in mitigating COVID-19 spread: A case study of the testing data

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Olympic Games provide unique opportunities to analyse policies that protect participants’ and local populations’ health during pandemics. While Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022 have been preliminarily lauded as successes, a deeper evaluation of the protocols is necessary to assess the risk management approaches and countermeasures implemented. This case study uses multiple quantitative analyses to understand the impact of the Games on both the Olympic participants and host populations including exploring trends in positivity rates, conducting time-to-event analysis using Kaplan- Meier curves of time to positive test and studying the reported number of cases in Tokyo and Beijing host populations respectively, before, during and after the Olympic Games. Tokyo 2020 reported 464 cases of COVID-19 among Olympic participants and Beijing 2022 reported 437 cases. The mean test positivity rate was 0.04 % for Tokyo 2020 and 0.01 % for Beijing 2022. The mean time to a primary positive test was 1.89 days from entry for Tokyo 2020 and 4.12 days for Beijing 2022. Regression analysis confirmed that, while case numbers increased in the host populations during the period of observation, they followed the predicted values in place. This analysis suggests that during the Games COVID-19 transmission was negligible in both host cities. We determined the Olympics did not have a significant impact on COVID-19 incidence for Tokyo or Beijing. The Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022 Olympic Games were successful in demonstrating that mass gathering events can be held safely during a respiratory pandemic with appropriate countermeasures in place.