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Feb. 6 (UPI) -- An Australian curler won her round during the mixed-doubles competition Sunday after testing positive for COVID-19 as criticism for China's strict quarantine rules continues to swirl.
Tahli Gill and her partner Dean Hewitt were waiting for a taxi to the airport to return home after testing positive for the virus only to be later cleared to participate, ESPN reported. Olympics officials said that her test results showed a level of infection deemed to fall into an acceptable range.
Gill and Hewitt went on to defeat Rachel Homan and John Morris of Canada with a score of 10-8.
China has imposed strict rules to combat the spread of COVID-19 throughout the pandemic, including locking down cities with more than a million people and widespread testing measures.
The zero-tolerance approach from China has helped the country keep its number of cases and deaths low after the virus originated in the country in 2020. China reported just 43 cases on Sunday after cases reached 223 on Jan. 17, their highest level since the onset of the pandemic.
New restrictions were imposed before the Olympic Games amid fears of the spread of the Omicron variant. Beijing has imposed a "closed-loop" system with 60,000 competitors, journalists and other officials cut off from the rest of China.
All athletes must be vaccinated and are tested daily, no foreigners have been allowed into the country as spectators and China opted out of selling tickets to the Chinese public ahead of the competition.
Athletes who test positive for the coronavirus have been forced to quarantine in hotels but have complained about the quality of the food and the lack of information about their situations.
Belgian skeleton racer Kim Meylemans, 25, posted a video to her Instagram in which she said that she was not allowed to return to the Olympic Village and kept in a facility where she is not allowed contact with anyone else.
"We are not even sure if I ever will be allowed to return to the village and obviously this is very hard for me," she said in the video. After her video went viral, she was allowed to leave isolation and compete in the Olympic Games.
American snowboarder Jamie Anderson, 31, called the 2022 Winter Olympics an "absolute nightmare" in comments made during a news conference Wednesday.
"It's definitely a more complicated Olympics -- and already going to the Olympics is very stressful and you have so much on your plate," she said.
Anderson placed ninth in the women's slopestyle snowboarding event on Sunday while her teammate Julia Marino took the silver medal.
