Asian Games 2022 postponed amid Covid surge in China
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The 2022 Asian Games, which were scheduled to take place in Hangzhou in September, were on Friday postponed amid a surge in COVID-19 cases in China, PTI reported.
According to state-run CGTN TV, the Olympic Council of Asia has postponed the 19th edition of the multi-sports Games, the second biggest sporting event after the Olympics in size.
"The Olympic Council of Asia has announced that the 19th Asian Games, originally scheduled to be held in Hangzhou, China from September 10 to 25, 2022, will be postponed," said a statement on the official Games website, first posted on the Chinese state media.
The new dates for the sporting contest "will be announced at a later date", the statement added.
The host city of Hangzhou lies less than 200 kilometers (120 miles) from the country's biggest city, Shanghai, which has endured a weeks-long lockdown as part of the ruling Communist Party's zero-tolerance approach to the virus.
Organizers said last month that Hangzhou, a city of 12 million in eastern China, had finished constructing some 56 competition venues for the Asian Games and Asian Para Games.
At the time, they indicated that they planned to hold the events under a virus control plan that "learns from the successful experience" of the Beijing Winter Olympics, which were held in February in a strict Covid-secure bubble.
Hangzhou was poised to become the third city in China to host the continental competition after Beijing in 1990 and Guangzhou in 2010.
Almost all international sport has grind to a halt in China since Covid emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019.
China has stubbornly stuck to a zero-Covid policy, imposing strict lockdowns, quarantines and mass testing programmes even while other countries start to reopen as the threat of the pandemic recedes.