Variants be damned. China plans to go forward with the upcoming 2022 Winter Olympics despite the global threat of the super-mutated coronavirus variant Omicron. Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Tuesday that China would make sure all athletes and support personnel would be in a “closed loop” and tested daily for COVID-19 leading up to and during the Beijing Games, scheduled from Feb. 4 to 20. “I believe it will definitely pose some challenge to our efforts to prevent and control the virus, but as China has experience in preventing and controlling the coronavirus, I fully believe that China will be able to host the Winter Olympics as scheduled, smoothly and successfully,” he said. China, where COVID-19 originally broke out, has adopted a zero-tolerance approach to the pandemic, adopting the strictest containment measures anywhere in the world.