Published: 2024
Total Pages: 0
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The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly affected all mass gatherings for sporting and religious events, causing cancellation, postponement, or downsizing. The effectiveness of various mitigation and control measures, including the availability of vaccines and the expansion of effective testing options, allowed the Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the International Olympic Committee and the Japanese Government to successfully host the rescheduled 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games from July 23 to Aug 8, 2021 with robust safety plans in place. In February and March, 2022, Beijing hosted the 2022 Winter Olympic Games as scheduled, built on the lessons learnt from the Tokyo Games, and developed specific COVID-19 countermeasure plans in the context of China's national framework for the plan called Zero COVID. Results from the testing programmes at both the Tokyo and Beijing Games show that the measures put in place were effective at preventing the spread of COVID-19 within the Games, and ensured that neither event became a COVID-19-spreading event. According to this study, the extensive experience from the Tokyo and Beijing Olympic Games highlights that it is possible to organise mass gatherings during a pandemic, provided that appropriate risk assessment, risk mitigation, and risk communication arrangements are in place, leaving legacies for future mass gatherings, public health, epidemic preparedness, and wider pandemic response.