Organisers announced last week that they were anticipating around 150,000 fans attending events from outside the closed loop - a system devised to separate Games participants and the local population.

Around 15,000 fans were present at the Beijing National Stadium to witness the Opening Ceremony of Beijing 2022 on February 4.

Chinese citizens have also taken their seat at venues across the competition zones in Beijing and Zhangjiakou over the past seven days.

But Beijing 2022 have been non-committal when asked by journalists for overall spectator numbers.

Yan Jiarong, spokesperson for Beijing 2022, conceded that the number of fans attending the Games had attracted attention but would only give figures for Wednesday (February 9) for the Zhangjiakou competition zone and National Indoor Stadium which is staging ice hockey matches.

"Spectators are coming from both inside and outside the closed loop," said Yan.

"From outside the loop, they are mainly residents from Zhangjiakou and Beijing including fans of winter sport, common residents and students in school as well international friends living here.

"Before, during and after they watch the Games they should follow the countermeasures strict.

"You mention the number of spectators, it is different for ice and snow venues.

"They have different capacity and that is why we have different numbers of spectators in different venues and different events.

"I asked two of my colleagues about spectators since so many people are paying attention to that and they told me that on February 9 in the Zhangjiakou zone, the number of spectators was more than 2,200 and here was nearly 1,000 spectators on site in the National Indoor Stadium.

Tickets for the Games are not being sold publicly, with a special scheme in place instead to invite spectators to events.

No fans are present at competition in Yanqing – the venue for Alpine skiing and sliding sports at Beijing 2022.

The emergence of the Omicron coronavirus variant had raised question marks over the possibility of spectators at the Winter Olympics.

Although China has imposed a "zero-COVID" strategy in response to the pandemic, cases have popped up across the country, resulting in cities being put into lockdown.

Huang Chun, deputy director general for the office of pandemic prevention and control at Beijing 2022, said no one coming from outside the closed loop had tested positive for COVID-19.

"From January 23, we [provided] the COVID information every day so we released the information about inside the closed loop but people are also concerned about the situation outside the closed loop," said Huang.

"I can tell you that there are no positive case outside the loop.

"A lot of spectators were at the Opening Ceremony or at other venues and none of them tested positive so please rest assured that whether inside or outside the loop it is pretty safe and the current control and prevention system has been quite effective."