Coronavirus Watch: COVID-free fortress for the 2022 Olympics?

With the Beijing Olympics set to begin Friday and the Paralympics starting March 4, thousands of overseas visitors are converging on China from dozens of countries around the world.

The Games could complicate the country's efforts to remain substantially COVID-19-free, especially with the highly transmissible and faster-spreading omicron variant.

Reporter Kim Hjelmgaard has the latest on how organizers in Beijing are taking coronavirus precautionary measures to new heights. Read the story here.

Want free text updates on all things Olympics? A team of Paste BN journalists in Beijing will bring you exclusive behind-the-scenes access to the Games and news as it happens. Sign up with your phone number here.

It's Tuesday, and this is Coronavirus Watch from the Paste BN Network. Here's more news to know:

• Pfizer and its partner BioNTech are expected to request FDA emergency-use authorization for their COVID-19 vaccine for children under 5, the Washington Post and New York Times reported.
• Washington state filed a lawsuit Monday against a nationwide coronavirus testing chain, alleging the chain provided "invalid, false and delayed" test results or provided no results at all and "frequently marked patients as 'uninsured,' even if they were insured."
• Tens of thousands of tons of medical waste from the pandemic is "threatening human and environmental health and exposing a dire need to improve waste management practices," according to a new WHO report.
• The U.S. reported almost exactly as many cases in January as it did in all of 2020, a Paste BN analysis of Johns Hopkins University data shows. The country reported more than 20 million cases in January.

See our COVID-19 resource guide here. See total reported cases and deaths here. On vaccinations: About 75% of people in the U.S. have received at least one vaccine shot, and about 63% are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.

– Grace Hauck, Paste BN breaking news reporter, @grace_hauck