COVID-19 and its impact on Asian Athletics
Advise from AAA Medical Commission for safer Competition
The COVID-19 virus is a new pathogen that is highly contagious, and has been spreading quickly from China to all over the world. The World Health Organization declared the Pandemic on March 11, 2020. All possible and emergency measures have been taken to slow down the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, reduce disease and save lives in many countries. However, COVID-19 has been causing enormous health, economic and societal impacts in any setting, including our loved sports, Athletics. Due to the pandemic situation of COVID-19, the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 has been postponed to the year 2021.
Many sports communities in Asian countries have also implemented the necessary preventive measures to interrupt or minimize the transmission chains in humans. Under the government and local authority orders, the organizers of sports events have taken measures such as downsizing, postponement or cancellation of the events aimed to stop the transmission of the virus to our athletes, coaches, officials and spectators.
The AAA Medical commission would like to advise all member federations to take every possible step to ensure a safe competition and training environment, and to keep athletes, their families and representatives away from COVID-19 virus. This should include but not limited to:
1. educate athletes and their representatives on the seriousness of COVID-19 and their role in preventing its spread. They should wear face mask, wash their hands, use hand sanitizing solution with 70~80 % of alcohol, and keep cough etiquette when they do cough.
2. downsize, postpone and cancel the athletics events with the consultation of government / local authority.
3. make strong measures for the safer competition including use of masks, compulsory body temperature taken and prohibition of participation of the events for those who have fever, cough and general symptoms of chest infection.
Measures taken in some national federations are shown as examples.
Example 1. CHINESE TAIPEI
Competition cancelled or postponed;
1. Road Races from February
2. Mega events, such as National Middle School
Games and National Intern-collegiate Games
The preventive measures
in the stadium events;
1. Stadium events – on scheduled under the condition that there should be less than 500 people on the tracks at the same time.
2. Ask all coaches. athletes, staffs and media to wear a mask all times, except the athletes standing on the start line (for all track and field events).
3. The athletes are allowed to enter the warmup tracks only 2.5 hours before the competition time, and cannot return to the warmup tracks after the competition.
4. Even when the athletes are sitting on the bench in the field event, they need to wear a mask and shall not talk to each other. Only coaches can access the spectator standing.
Example 2. Hong Kong
Competition cancelled
or postponed;
1. 2020 Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon
2. 2020 Hong Kong Ultramarathon Championships
3. 15th Asian Cross Country Championships
4. ASICS Hong Kong Athletics Series 1
Training course cancelled;
- Youth Athletes Athletics Training Scheme 2019/20
- Hong Kong Junior Athletics Advanced Training Course 2020
- Youth Athletes Athletics Training Scheme 2019/20
Preventive measures at the training facilities
The Hong Kong Sports Institute, the training venue for the Hong Kong Athletics team, has cancelled all part time and junior athletes’ training since 29 Jan 2020, and further locked down for two weeks since 25 March 2020.
For the athletic stadium that provide training facilities for other athletes and coaches, special preventive measures such as limited number of users to 150 per session, compulsory body temperature check before admission, and wear task at all times when the users are not in training.
Example 3. India
Competition cancelled or postponed;
1. Indian Grand Prix 1 and 2
2. Federation Cup National Junior Championships
Training;
1. No athlete or support person can come out or
get in National Camps.
2. National Camp is out of bound even for
Federation officials.
Example 4. Indonesia
Training course cancelled or postponed;
1. National training closed until the situation
under control
2. All athletes back to their town but they can
train in their place with programme from their coaches and all coaches should
monitor their athletes regularly.
3. Junior and Senior National Champs
4. Youth SEA Champs
Example 5. Iran
All National athletes are under observation.
Set up the Anti-COVID-19 Headquarter in Sport.
Competition cancelled or postponed;
- All of competition have been cancelled since 5th March
Training course cancelled;
- All of National training
- Not only Athletics stadiums but also all of sport’s club and Gym are closed until secondary notice in all of provinces
Example 6. Japan
Competition cancelled or postponed;
- Tokyo Olympics Games
- Olympics Test events of Athletics
- Asian 20 Km Race Walk Championships in Nomi
- Tokyo Marathon for citizen class
- Nagoya Women’s Marathon for citizen class
- Gifu Seiryu Half Marathon
The preventive measures in the stadium events;
1. Stadium events – on scheduled under some specific conditions.
2. All coaches. athletes, staffs, media and spectators to wear a mask all times.
3. All persons who will participate or come to the events will have to monitor their health condition every day and body temperature must be below 37 degree Celsius on the competition days.
- Measures not to accumulate many athletes at the same time should be taken.
- Ask athletes, their representatives and spectators to report to the organizers if they suffer from COVID-19 after competition.
Training course cancelled;
- All training camps outside Japan
- Inter high school training camp
