American millionaire Jonathan Lehrer denied bail after being charged with killing Canadian couple
American millionaire Jonathan Lehrer, one of two men charged in the killings of a Canadian couple in Dominica, has been denied bail.
For athletes competing at the Winter Olympics in Beijing, arriving at the Games with a clean bill of health is a crucial part of their preparation.
The prospect of testing positive for COVID-19 -- and thus missing out on the chance of competing -- looms over every athlete ahead of Beijing 2022, which gets underway on February 4.
Amid a plethora of COVID-19 countermeasures, athletes must record two negative tests before departing for the Games and are then subject to daily tests upon arrival.
"One positive test is going to do us in at this point," U.S. mogul skier Hannah Soar told CNN Sport.
"It's super stressful, I didn't know that I really struggled with anxiety to be totally honest until the past couple of months."
Staying COVID-19-free constitutes an important part of an athlete's preparation for the Winter Olympics.
Soar has been training and isolating in Utah for the past month, which involves living in a separate house to her teammates, ordering groceries for delivery and wearing a KN95 mask under her neck warmer while skiing.
"This is definitely the most drastic we've gone with COVID protocols and that's what we have to do," she said.
"It's crazy and it's wild and it's something that I didn't think that I'd be doing going into the Olympics, but it is what it is and we're handling it the best we can."
She added: "I treat everyone like they have Covid. It creates a lot of anxiety in my life, but hopefully, it gets me to China."
At last year's Summer Olympics in Tokyo, 41 athletes tested positive for COVID-19, many of whom subsequently had to withdraw from competing.
As of Wednesday, 42 people inside Beijing's closed loop bubble for the Olympics have tested positive for COVID-19since January 4 with more than 42,000 tests conducted inside the bubble.
Organizers hope the closed loop system will restrict the spread of COVID-19 during the course of the Games. It will encompass venues, official hotels and the event's own transport service, effectively sealing off those involved in the Games from the rest of the Chinese population.
The strict measures are a reflection of China's zero-Covid policy, although the emergence of more positive cases connected to the Games seems inevitable.
"[China] may have actually done the best job of any country in the world in controlling the spread of Covid," Dr. William Schaffner, professor at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, told CNN.
He continued: "They have created this remarkable series of very strict restrictions and controls that will have consequences. There is very little room for interpretation.
"I would imagine that this extraordinarily contagious virus can get through some of those controls nevertheless, and there might well be a few cases of transmission."
Fully vaccinated individuals will be able to enter the closed loop without quarantining, while those who aren't vaccinated will need to quarantine for 21 days upon arrival.
Games participants who test positive will not be able to compete or continue their role in the Games, instead being sent to a hospital for treatment if they are symptomatic, or to an isolation facility if they are asymptomatic.
Recording two negative PCR tests 24 hours apart will enable an individual to end their isolation, but there's no guarantee how long that might take.
"There is no doubt that some people recovering from Covid can have a persistently positive PCR test that can go on for weeks and even beyond a couple of months," said Dr. Schaffner.
"That does not mean you have live virus. That test is so sensitive, it is merely picking up remnants of the virus. You are not contagious to anyone else."
Laura Deas, a skeleton racer from Great Britain, will arrive in China having already experienced the closed loop system while attending a test event in Yanqing -- a mountainous district 75 kilometres northwest of Beijing -- last year.
"Everything that we did -- training, eating and sleeping -- was all within this bubble, but it felt incredibly organized," she told CNN while self-isolating at home in the UK ahead of the Games.
She added: "It's certainly a challenge and it just means that I can't really live a normal life at the moment ... I've jumped all of these hurdles over the past few years to get to this point and I'm just trying really hard to do all the right things now so that I can get to Beijing safely without Covid."
Close to 3,000 athletes will compete in 15 disciplines across 109 events at Beijing 2022; with the Games fast approaching, they will be all be praying that a positive test doesn't derail their chances.
"I know full well that if I get the opportunity to be there, I'm capable of getting a medal," said Soar, "But if I don't get there, then I can't get a medal.
"So definitely the biggest hurdle for me is just making sure that we get on the hill, we get into our bibs, we get into our start gate and I can push out."
American millionaire Jonathan Lehrer, one of two men charged in the killings of a Canadian couple in Dominica, has been denied bail.
Cabinet minister Dominic LeBlanc says he plans to run in the next election as a candidate under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's leadership, amid questions about his rumoured interest in succeeding his longtime friend for the top job.
A male columnist has apologized for a cringeworthy moment during former University of Iowa superstar and college basketball's highest scorer Caitlin Clark's first news conference as an Indiana Fever player.
The United States has vetoed a widely backed UN resolution that would have paved the way for full United Nations membership for the state of Palestine.
A group of suspects that allegedly defrauded seniors across Ontario and other parts of Canada using a so-called emergency grandparent scam appear to have ties to 'Italian traditional organized crime,' according to an investigator involved in the OPP-led probe.
Health Canada will change its longstanding policy restricting gay and bisexual men from donating to sperm banks in Canada, CTV News has learned. The federal health agency has adopted a revised directive removing the ban on gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men, effective May 8.
Prince Harry, the son of King Charles III and fifth in line to the British throne, has formally confirmed he is now a U.S. resident.
The judge presiding over the trial of a man accused of fatally running over a Toronto police officer is telling jurors the possible verdicts they may reach based on the evidence in the case.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Molly Knight, a grade four student in Nova Scotia, noticed her school library did not have many books on female athletes, so she started her own book drive in hopes of changing that.
Almost 7,000 bars of pure gold were stolen from Pearson International Airport exactly one year ago during an elaborate heist, but so far only a tiny fraction of that stolen loot has been found.
When Les Robertson was walking home from the gym in North Vancouver's Lower Lonsdale neighbourhood three weeks ago, he did a double take. Standing near a burrow it had dug in a vacant lot near East 1st Street and St. Georges Avenue was a yellow-bellied marmot.
A moulting seal who was relocated after drawing daily crowds of onlookers in Greater Victoria has made a surprise return, after what officials described as an 'astonishing' six-day journey.
Just steps from Parliament Hill is a barber shop that for the last 100 years has catered to everyone from prime ministers to tourists.
A high score on a Foo Fighters pinball machine has Edmonton player Dave Formenti on a high.
A compound used to treat sour gas that's been linked to fertility issues in cattle has been found throughout groundwater in the Prairies, according to a new study.
While many people choose to keep their medical appointments private, four longtime friends decided to undergo vasectomies as a group in B.C.'s Lower Mainland.