Omicron takes off in China, inches closer to Beijing before winter Olympics

Omicron has flared in a port city that borders Beijing and spread inland before Chinese officials detected it, seeding the highly contagious variant on the doorstop of the nation’s capital less than one month before the winter Olympics begin. 

There have been 21 new locally confirmed Covid cases in the city of Tianjin, after two omicron infections were found on Saturday, triggering closed schools, halted travel and mass testing over the weekend. The steps came too late for the nearby province of Henan, itself the epicenter of a delta outbreak, after a college student believed to be infected with omicron returned