Beijing Winter Olympics will have shortened torch relay as capital records more Covid-19 cases

Name: Beijing records first local case of Omicron ahead of Winter Olympics and Lunar New Year
Uploaded: 2022-01-21T15:00:15.000Z
Duration: 1 min 55 s
Description: Beijing records first local case of Omicron ahead of Winter Olympics and Lunar New Year

Officials warn that the Chinese capital faces a ‘complicated and severe’ battle to stop Delta and Omicron spreading

Beijing 2022 organisers are stepping up efforts to isolate the event, unveiling plans for a relay inside the closed-loop bubble

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The Chinese capital is preparing for the Games to open next month. Photo: AFP

Josephine Ma

Published: 11:00pm, 21 Jan 2022

The Winter Olympic organisers announced the torch relay would be held within a closed bubble as officials in the Chinese capital warned it faced a “severe” battle against the Delta and Omicron strains of Covid-19.

By Friday afternoon the city had reported seven new symptomatic and five asymptomatic local cases.

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Beijing records first local case of Omicron ahead of Winter Olympics and Lunar New Year

Pang Xinghuo, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, said the capital was now tackling cases from two different sources.

“There are clusters from two different sources. The first one was infected by international mail. There are five local cases of Omicron and they are all in Haidian district,” Pang said.

“Another cluster was infected by the cold chain, and they are Delta cases. There are 13 symptomatic cases and five asymptomatic cases. They are found in Chaoyang, Fengtai, and Fangshan districts,” she said, describing the situation as “complicated and severe”.

Pang said on Monday that the city’s first Omicron case had been infected by mail sent from Toronto on January 7, though Health Canada said the chances of this happening were extremely low.