After seven years of preparation, the curtain will soon be raised on the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games, as the Games are now entering the final countdown.

On Saturday night, a rehearsal of the opening ceremony, involving about 4,000 participants, was held at the National Stadium. While the Olympic villages in the three Games venues of Beijing, Yanqing and Zhangjiakou opened on Sunday to accommodate the international delegates, media personnel, and those athletes who have already arrived.

Yet for all the complexities involved in hosting such a large event in three different localities, the biggest challenge the organizers face is undoubtedly the novel coronavirus, which is still rampant in most parts of the world.

Despite the "closed loop" system that has been put in place to separate Games-related personnel from the Chinese population, the risks remain. That 72 people who have arrived inside the "bubble" since it opened earlier this month have tested positive — 39 detected during entry tests and 33 in closed-loop tests — points to the mounting pressure for the organizers to contain any possible infections.

Adding to the difficulties are sporadic locally transmitted cases in Beijing, which means the capital is fighting against the spread of the virus on two fronts — one inside, and the other outside, the closed loop. After Beijing reported nine infections on Saturday, authorities immediately organized nucleic acid tests for COVID-19 for all of the residents in the city's Fengtai district, where six cases were detected, as part of precautionary measures.

Such moves are essential to ensure the Games can be held safely and successfully, even amid the pandemic.

That some countries are not sending official delegations to the Games is symptomatic of the world's polarization on ideological, political, technological and economic fronts, which has fueled prejudice and even hatred.

This makes the upcoming Games motto of "together for a shared future" all the more pertinent. That the Games is being held is an expression of hope in the future, as it serves to provide a rare healing and unifying moment for different nations to come together under the Olympic flag and recall all that it stands for: peace, unity, brotherhood, and mutual understanding.

Now that Beijing, with all its "meticulous" preparation work, has set the stage, let the Olympic flame be a marker on the way to better days ahead.