The knock came in the middle of the night, a pounding on the door that awakened an NBC Sports employee who had triggered COVID protocols in Beijing.
Once the hotel room door opened, the employee was immediately taken by hazmat-wearing officials to a dedicated vehicle which whisked them away to a so-called “isolation center.” The employee’s new home, where they would have to wait and test their way out of, was dubbed by one source as “a one-star Chinese hotel.”
That employee is just one of several international journalists and workers at the Beijing Games who have found themselves ensnared in China’s strict Olympic COVID protocols, facing isolation for a week or more until they can negative-test their way to freedom.