The Tour of Guangxi men's and women's races became the latest UCI World Tour event to be canceled due to the impact of the coronavirus outbreak.

The Chinese government already announced last month that it will not host most of its scheduled international sporting events for the remainder of 2020, and on Monday Wanda Sports, organizer of the Tour of Guangxi, confirmed that neither the men's nor women's races will take place this year.

The men's Tour of Guangxi was scheduled to run from October 15-20 and the women's on October 20; due to a revision of the UCI calendar due to the COVID-19 epidemic, the races now overlap with both the Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a España.

"Due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, there are still certain risks involved in organizing international sporting events. Therefore, in a recent official statement, the General Administration of Sports of China recommended the cancellation of all international sporting events during the year," event director Terry Zhang said in a statement.

"Over the past six months, we have done our best to ensure that all preparations are in progress so that the race can take place as scheduled. Unfortunately, we finally had to accept this reality and reached an agreement with the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region government and the China Cycling Association on the cancellation of the 2020 Tour of Guangxi."

Chang added that both the UCI and the participating teams have already been notified of the cancellation. The Tour of Guangxi was held for the first time in 2017, making it the second Chinese event to be included in the World Tour calendar, after the Tour of Beijing, which was held in the same October from 2011 to 2014.

The Tour of Chongming Island also seems unlikely to be held in 2020. The Women's World Tour race has been postponed from May to October 23-25, but is not listed on the Women's World Tour calendar published on the UCI website.

The Tour of Guangxi has been incorporated into the 2021 World Tour calendar, with the men's race scheduled for October 14-19 and the women's race for October 19; the 2021 Tour of Chongming Island is scheduled for May 6-8.

The Tour of Guangxi is the 13th event on the 2020 men's World Tour calendar to be cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak: the Tour de Romandie, Tour de Suisse, Classica de San Sebastian, and E3 Binkbank Classic, RideLondon-Salais Classic, Eschborn-Frankfurt, Dwars door Fraunderen, EuroEyes Cyclassics, GP de Quebec, and GP de Montreal.

The UCI Road World Championships, which were scheduled to take place in Aigle Martigny from September 20 to 27, are also in jeopardy because of current restrictions on public gatherings in Switzerland. A decision on the event is expected after the Swiss Federal Council issued an update on the COVID-19 measure on Wednesday.

On Friday, the World Championships Organizing Committee acknowledged that the event "cannot take place without a significant relaxation of the measures against events with more than 1,000 people."