A top Olympics official said definitively Tuesday that the 2022 Winter Games, set to begin Feb. 4 in Beijing, will not be postponed by the spreading Omicron variant of COVID-19.
Juan Antonio Samaranch, the chair of the Coordination Commission for the Beijing Games, was asked on a videoconference whether there were any imaginable circumstances that could lead to postponement.
"The answer is no," he said confidently. Beijing organizers have designed a bubble-like "closed loop" system that, Samaranch said, "can cope with mostly everything that can happen in the world about and around COVID."
Beijing Olympics are prepared for Omicron
Omicron, a newly-identified variant that many scientists believe spreads faster than earlier variants, has sparked concern across the globe.