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16th Feb 2018

Athletes confirmed to have fallen ill due to the Winter Olympics norovirus outbreak

Rory Cashin

Officials tried to deal with the outbreak initially by sequestering over 1,000 people.

At least two athletes have now been confirmed to have been caught up in the norovirus outbreak which has already infected several people at this year’s Winter Olympics.

Initially, 41 security personnel had been confirmed to have caught the virus, which led to the Winter Olympics officials to attempt to sequester all 1,200 security members in order to try to contain the outbreak.

However, a spokesperson for the Swiss Olympic team has confirmed that two of their members have caught the extremely contagious bug.

One of the members was freestyle skier Fabian Boesch, and the second has yet to be identified.

According to a report on Reuters, the spokesperson stated:

“Everyone else is safe. We did everything we could. We took them away from the rest of the team and now they have to recover.”

“They were taken to a single room and had no contact with the other athletes. Please note that athletes who have had the norovirus are allowed to compete if they are in good physical health, have been tested by the Swiss medical team, take all precautionary measures and the IOC [International Olympic Committee] has been consulted.”

The norovirus, which essentially consists of a lot of vomiting and diarrhoea, resulted in the aforementioned 1,200 Olympic security officers to be replaced at the last minute by over 900 South Korean military members instead.