Condoms available but hugs discouraged at Beijing Winter Olympics

Story by Reuters

Updated 1309 GMT (2109 HKT) January 25, 2022

Condoms provided by a media hotel inside the closed loop «bubble» designed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease are seen ahead of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics.

(Reuters)Beijing Olympics organizers are keeping up with the tradition of making condoms available to athletes, despite detailed social distancing guidelines intended to curb the spread of COVID-19 within the «closed loop» in which the Games will take place.

«All Olympic-related units will provide appropriate quantities of condoms for free at the appropriate time to people who've checked in to stay inside the loop,» organizers told Reuters by email on Tuesday.The Games are set to take place from Feb. 4-20 in Beijing and the nearby city of Zhangjiakou inside a bubble that strictly separates athletes and other Games personnel from the public.Journalists who checked into the Guizhou Hotel, which is inside the closed loop, found five individually wrapped condoms in each room. They were individually packed in different-colored envelopes decorated with an image of a Chinese lantern.Organizers did not immediately say how many condoms they would distribute.Read MoreA security guard keeps watch at the boundary of the closed loop «bubble» near the Main Media Center of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, January 25, 2022. In the playbook on COVID-19 measures for Games personnel, athletes are instructed to minimize physical interactions such as hugs, high-fives and handshakes and to maintain a social distance of at least two meters from fellow competitors.Ahead of last Summer's Tokyo Games, organizers said they planned to give away about 150,000 condoms but told athletes to take them home rather than use