The athletes continue to land in Paris, the delegations designate their flag bearers and the International Olympic Committee The International Olympic Committee (IOC) begins its traditional pre-Olympic session on Tuesday, three days before the highly anticipated opening ceremony of Paris 2024.
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The Seine will be the epicentre of the world on Friday, with 300,000 spectators on the scene to greet the boats carrying thousands of athletes in an unprecedented parade, the first Olympic opening ceremony to take place outside a stadium, which requires exceptional security measures.
In anticipation of D-Day, an unusual silence has fallen on Rue de Rivoli, the area around the Louvre pyramid and the Tuileries Gardens, in the heart of the tourist centre of the French capital. Instead of the flood of locals and tourists, police officers and metal barriers are the main feature in some of the most central areas.
Covid, a threat
The president of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games Organizing Committee, Tony Estanguetruled out, for the moment, the wearing of masks, despite the probable resurgence of Covid-19 in sensitive areas such as the Olympic Village, which will accommodate up to 14,500 people between athletes and coaching staff.
“There is no recommendation to reinforce the device. We have a health plan ready to activate it, if necessary, but the recommendation is that the ordinary health plan continues, which is based, in particular, on good hand hygiene,” Estanguet said on Sunday, five days before the start of the Games.
The head of the Paris Olympics clarified that “there is no recommendation to implement the wearing of masks” at this time. French health authorities had warned of a spike in Covid-19 cases in June, a situation that had improved in July with a stabilisation of the circulation of the virus in the Paris region.
However, health experts expect the situation to worsen due to the arrival of 15 million spectators, two million of them foreigners.
First case of Covid-19 before the Games
However, alarm bells rang on Tuesday when the first positive case of Covid-19 in an athlete was reported.
A few days before the official start of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, it was announced that one of the athletes of the Australian delegation who is already in French territory tested positive.
The head of mission for the Australian Olympic team, Anna Meares, was responsible for confirming the infection of one of the members of the water polo team.
“We have an athlete who is in isolation due to Covid. He was detected last night,” he explained at a press conference. “I would like to emphasise that we treat Covid in the same way as other viruses such as the flu. It is not Tokyo. The athlete does not feel particularly ill and continues to train, but sleeps alone in a room,” she added.
The head of the mission indicated that the affected colleagues wear masks and respect the containment gestures.
The women’s water polo tournament begins on Saturday and the athlete affected by Covid will only participate once she has received the approval of the medical officer of the delegation.
The swimming events, like water polo, will be held at the Paris La Défense Arena in Nanterre, which opened in 2017.
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