PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — They sprang up like mushrooms atop almost every table, countertop and reasonably flat surface at the Olympic venues on Thursday afternoon: freshly unpacked bottles of hand sanitizer.
Lots of them.
By Thursday night, 42 more cases of norovirus were confirmed around the sites of the 2018 Winter Olympics, bringing the official tally of cases this week to 128. A mere 24 hours before the opening ceremony of the Games, the outbreak has threatened to undermine an otherwise watertight start to the global sports event.
Determined not to let the quadrennial Games spiral into a widespread gastrointestinal nightmare, the organizers on Thursday seemed intent on carrying out a scorched-earth assault on every last germ in a 40-mile radius.