New Delhi: Amid the worse COVID outbreak in China, the Asian Games due to take place in Hangzhou in September have been postponed indefinitely, organisers said on Friday.
While organisers gave no reason was given for the postponement, China is racing to extinguish its largest outbreak of COVID-19 since the early days of the pandemic.
“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 kilometres (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.
Meanwhile, Shanghai reported 4,024 new local asymptomatic coronavirus cases on May 5, down from 4,390 a day earlier. Confirmed symptomatic cases stood at 245, also down from 261 a day earlier.