The National Hockey League (NHL) announced Wednesday that its players will not participate in the upcoming 2022 Winter Olympic hockey games in Beijing amid concerns over a rise in COVID-19 cases. The NHL and the NHL Players’ Association’s agreement comes after the league has been forced to postpone 50 games to date due to multiple virus outbreaks. On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that the new Omicron variant of the disease made up 73 percent of all COVID-19 cases in the United States last week, overtaking the Delta variant. This has sparked fears among health professionals that Christmas gatherings could see a surge in cases. In Wednesday’s statement, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said the league had “waited as long as possible” to make the difficult decision and explored “every option available option to enable our players to participate in the 2022 Winter Olympic Games.” “Unfortunately, given the profound disruption to the …