By GRA­HAM DUN­BAR-As­so­ci­at­ed Press

BEI­JING (AP) — Ath­letes and team of­fi­cials are test­ing pos­i­tive for COVID-19 at much high­er rates than oth­er peo­ple ar­riv­ing in Chi­na for the Bei­jing Olympics, or­ga­niz­ers said Tues­day.

Fig­ures re­leased by lo­cal or­ga­niz­ers showed 16 of 379 ath­letes and of­fi­cials who ar­rived Mon­day test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19. They have been tak­en in­to iso­la­tion ho­tels to lim­it the spread of the in­fec­tion and could miss their events.

The pos­i­tive test rate of 4.2% for ath­letes and of­fi­cials com­pared to 0.66% for Olympic “stake­hold­ers,” a group which in­cludes work­ers and me­dia. On­ly sev­en of 1,059 peo­ple in that cat­e­go­ry ar­riv­ing at Bei­jing were pos­i­tive in sim­i­lar tests Mon­day.

The rates were con­firmed in PCR and oth­er fol­low-up tests for tens of thou­sands of peo­ple at the Bei­jing Olympics who will live, work and train in closed-off com­mu­ni­ties sep­a­rat­ed from the gen­er­al pub­lic. The Chi­nese gov­ern­ment is pur­su­ing a ze­ro-tol­er­ance pub­lic health strat­e­gy.

On Mon­day, the rate of in­fec­tion from tests of those al­ready in­side the Olympic bub­bles was 100 times high­er for ath­letes and of­fi­cials com­pared to work­ers. Five of 3,103 tests from the ath­letes-of­fi­cials group were pos­i­tive com­pared to on­ly one of more than 60,000 dai­ly tests from “stake­hold­ers.”

A to­tal of 200 pos­i­tive tests for COVID-19 have now been record­ed at the Olympics since Jan. 23. Of those 200, 67 were ath­letes and of­fi­cials. “Stake­hold­ers” ac­count­ed for the oth­er 133.

Among the ath­letes test­ing pos­i­tive in Bei­jing is Hong Kong ski­er Au­drey King, who ar­rived from a train­ing camp in Bosnia-Herze­gov­ina. King told the South Chi­na Morn­ing Post she had no symp­toms and was op­ti­mistic of ski­ing in the women’s slalom on Feb. 9.

The most se­nior ath­lete rep­re­sen­ta­tive at the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee, two-time Olympic hock­ey medal­ist Em­ma Ter­ho, al­so is in an iso­la­tion ho­tel af­ter test­ing pos­i­tive on ar­rival.

“Even though this is not the start I en­vis­aged, I was hap­py to see the pro­to­cols that Bei­jing 2022 has put in place are work­ing well,” Ter­ho, an IOC mem­ber from Fin­land who sits on the Olympic body’s ex­ec­u­tive board, wrote on her In­sta­gram ac­count.