SOURCE: AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

BEI­JING (AP) — Chi­na is lim­it­ing the torch re­lay for the Win­ter Olympics to on­ly three days amid coro­n­avirus wor­ries, or­ga­niz­ers said Fri­day.  The flame will be dis­played on­ly in en­closed venues that are deemed “safe and con­trol­lable,” ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cials.

No pub­lic tran­sit routes would be dis­turbed, and nor­mal life would con­tin­ue for the 20 mil­lion res­i­dents of the cap­i­tal, where a hand­ful of new COVID-19 cas­es have been record­ed over re­cent days.

Bei­jing’s deputy sports di­rec­tor, Yang Haib­in, said safe­ty was the “top pri­or­i­ty,” with the pan­dem­ic, venue prepa­ra­tions and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of for­est fires in Bei­jing’s cold, dry cli­mate all fac­tored in.

The re­lay will run from Feb. 2-4, tak­ing in the three com­pe­ti­tion ar­eas of down­town Bei­jing, the sub­urb of Yan­qing, and Zhangji­ak­ou in the neigh­bour­ing province of Hebei.

The Games have al­ready been im­pact­ed on a scale sim­i­lar to that ex­pe­ri­enced by Tokyo dur­ing last year’s Sum­mer Olympics.

Chi­na says on­ly se­lect­ed spec­ta­tors will be al­lowed to at­tend the events, and Olympic ath­letes, of­fi­cials, staff and jour­nal­ists are re­quired to stay with­in a bub­ble that keeps them from con­tact with the gen­er­al pub­lic.

The open­ing of the Games comes just days af­ter the start of the Lu­nar New Year hol­i­day, Chi­na’s biggest an­nu­al cel­e­bra­tion when mil­lions tra­di­tion­al­ly trav­el to their home­towns for fam­i­ly re­unions. For the sec­ond year, the gov­ern­ment has ad­vised those liv­ing away from home to stay put, and train and plane trav­el has been cur­tailed.

Par­tic­i­pants in the torch ral­ly will un­der­go health screens and be care­ful­ly mon­i­tored, start­ing from two weeks be­fore the event be­gins, said Xu Zhi­jun, deputy head of the or­ga­niz­ing com­mit­tee.

Bei­jing re­port­ed its first lo­cal omi­cron in­fec­tion on Jan. 15, and 11 cas­es had been con­firmed in the cap­i­tal as of Thurs­day af­ter­noon, the of­fi­cial Xin­hua News Agency re­port­ed.

Out­side of Bei­jing, sev­er­al mil­lion peo­ple re­main un­der lock­down as part of Chi­na’s “ze­ro-tol­er­ance” ap­proach to deal­ing with the pan­dem­ic that has been cred­it­ed with pre­vent­ing out­breaks on the scale of the U.S. and oth­er coun­tries.

Num­bers of new cas­es have dropped sub­stan­tial­ly in re­cent days amid strict ad­her­ence to mask­ing, trav­el re­stric­tions and school clo­sures, along with a vac­ci­na­tion rate that now tops 85%. Some med­ical ex­perts wor­ry a lack of ex­po­sure to the virus could harm the Chi­nese pop­u­la­tion’s abil­i­ty to deal with fu­ture waves of in­fec­tion.

The scaled-down torch re­lay is a far cry from 2008, when Bei­jing sent the Olympic icon on a glob­al jour­ney ahead of its host­ing of that year’s Sum­mer Games. The re­lay drew pro­test­ers against Chi­na’s hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions and poli­cies in Ti­bet, Xin­jiang and else­where, lead­ing to vi­o­lent con­fronta­tions and the can­cel­la­tion of some over­seas stages.

The Win­ter Games have been be­set by sim­i­lar po­lit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sies, along­side med­ical con­sid­er­a­tions.

Six weeks ago, the Unit­ed States, Britain and sev­er­al al­lies said they would not send dig­ni­taries to at­tend the Games as a protest against hu­man rights abus­es by the Com­mu­nist Par­ty regime.

Ath­letes have been threat­ened by the or­ga­niz­ing com­mit­tee with “cer­tain pun­ish­ments” for say­ing or do­ing any­thing that would of­fend their Chi­nese hosts, while sev­er­al del­e­ga­tions urged any­one head­ed to Bei­jing to take “burn­er” phones in­stead of their per­son­al de­vices be­cause of con­cerns their per­son­al in­for­ma­tion could be com­pro­mised.

The Na­tion­al Hock­ey League cit­ed un­cer­tain­ty caused by the pan­dem­ic to hold back all of its play­ers from the Olympic tour­na­ment.

And ear­li­er this week, Amer­i­can broad­cast­er NBC said it won’t be send­ing an­nounc­ing teams to Chi­na, cit­ing the same virus con­cerns raised when the net­work pulled most of its broad­cast­ers from the Tokyo Games.