Beijing Winter Olympics 2022: Inside China's 'dystopian' Covid-bubble

China's strict pandemic measures are creating a surreal and at times anxious experience at the Beijing Winter Olympics. Photo / AP

For the thousands of athletes, journalists and others who have descended on Beijing for the Winter Olympics, China's strict pandemic measures are creating a surreal and at times anxious experience.

China is isolating everyone coming from abroad from any contact with the general public for the duration of the Games, which open this weekend. That means being taken from the Beijing airport in special vehicles to a hotel surrounded by temporary barricades that keep participants in and the public out.

"I know the only experience of Beijing I'm going to experience is the Beijing I will see out of my bus window and my hotel window," said Associated Press photo editor Yirmiyan Arthur, who arrived this week. "I'm not really going to experience China, I'm just going to experience the Olympics within the bubble."

The experiences of AP journalists who have arrived or are preparing to depart offer a glimpse into life inside the bubble.

Photographer Jae Hong said he had been warned about the bubble but seeing it in effect in Beijing was still a shock. He described seeing passengers met by workers in white, full-body protective gear. Everyone is tested for Covid-19 at the airport before being transported to their barricaded hotels, the entrances protected by round-the-clock guards.

Even within hotels, measures to isolate patrons are extreme, with full PPE suits worn by all staff, including within hotel restaurants and bars.

A waitress wearing a protective suit cleans a table at a restaurant in a Beijing hotel. Photo / AP

Reuters journalist Mari Saito described the experience within their hotel as "extremely dystopian vibes".

Organisers want to keep any infections from getting out of the bubble, as well as spreading within the bubble, a heightened concern with the easily transmissible omicron variant. Everyone is tested daily — failing to get tested the previous evening means being stuck in your hotel the next day.

Despite those measures, a total of 287 Covid-19 cases have been recorded since Jan. 23 within the bubble. Those people were put into isolation.

The IOC said Thursday at least 11 people have been treated at a hospital but none were serious cases.

Workers wearing protective suits at the airport assist arriving athletes. Photo / AP

Even getting to China can be worrying, requiring multiple negative Covid-19 tests entered into an app that displays your health status. That kept Arthur on edge during her journey from New Delhi to Beijing via Tokyo. A colleague who had already arrived in Beijing helped her download the app. Then she saw the health workers in biohazard suits after she got off the plane.

"In the airport it's a bit scary, it's almost like a hospital that was treating Covid patients in the second wave," she said, referring to India's devastating surge in March 2021.

Arthur could see other passengers at the airport from a bus, a view of people outside the Olympics bubble. "And you see... oh, there's life out there," she said, "and you're like, oh my God, it's so near and yet so far."

Tokyo also had strict rules for the Summer Olympics last year, but participants were allowed outside of the bubble after two weeks.