(Rio de Janeiro) The world celebrates the transition to the new year on Saturday with festivities often restricted due to COVID-19, entering a third year of pandemic against a backdrop of an explosion of contaminations and timid signs of hope for 2022 .
The emergence of the particularly contagious Omicron variant at the end of 2021 pushed the one million daily cases of coronavirus to exceed for the first time, according to an AFP count. Officially, more than 5.4 million people have died since the virus was first identified in China in December 2019.
Britain, the United States and even Australia, long sheltered from the pandemic, are breaking records of new cases.
And France announced in turn Thursday that Omicron was now the majority on its territory. However, in his wishes to the nation, French President Emmanuel Macron declared himself “resolutely optimistic”, wishing that 2022 also be “the year of exit from the epidemic”.
PHOTO THIBAULT CAMUS, ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Champs Élysées, in Paris
The Kiribati Islands in the Pacific were the first to celebrate the New Year starting at 10 a.m. GMT on Friday. But from Seoul to Mexico City and San Francisco, many festivities have once again been canceled or severely restricted.
In Paris, where the traditional New Year’s Eve fireworks display has been canceled, thousands of tourists and onlookers – far fewer than before the pandemic – strolled along the tree-lined avenue des Champs Élysées glittering, where the police controlled the wearing of the mask, again compulsory.
PHOTO MATT DUNHAM, ASSOCIATED PRESS
The festivities in London, UK
“Everything is closed in the Netherlands, so it’s better here. I’ll stay until midnight, see the lights, then we don’t really know, ”explains Koen, a 22-year-old Dutch tourist who came to Paris for New Years Eve with his girlfriend.
In the heart of Madrid, the traditional gathering at Puerta del Sol brought together some 7,000 people to swallow grapes to the sound of the stroke of midnight.
“It’s calm, I like it”
In Sydney, a city that usually boasts of being the ‘New Year’s Capital of the World’, crowds were unusually small in the harbor to watch the traditional fireworks display.
PHOTO DAVID GRAY, FRANCE-PRESSE AGENCY
Sydney, Australia’s largest city, also maintained its fireworks display, which lit up the city’s iconic harbor.
“I’m just trying to focus on the positive things that happened this year rather than the negative ones,” said Melinda Howard, a 22-year-old medical student.
In Dubai (United Arab Emirates), 36 fireworks at 29 sites set the city ablaze. Revelers gathered early in the evening to witness the spectacle of the world’s tallest tower, the Burj Khalifa.
In Brazil, the second country most bereaved by the pandemic after the United States, Rio de Janeiro has downsized for its celebrations, which annually attract three million tourists to the famous Copacabana beach. This year, concerts were canceled, access to the neighborhood restricted, and the tropical summer rain invited itself.
On Friday, three hours before entering 2022 and the 16-minute fireworks display over the bay, only a limited number of revelers – mostly dressed in white as tradition dictates – had responded.
“I expected to see a lot more people, it would be stressful,” says Alejandra Luna, a 28-year-old Colombian tourist, “but it’s calm, I like it”.
In South Africa, the first country to report the new variant at the end of November, the night curfew in force for 21 months and which had been reduced to the hours between midnight and 4 a.m. has been lifted.
” Our dream ”
PHOTO STEFAN JEREMIAH, REUTERS
In Times Square in New York, official events will be reduced, but large crowds are still expected.
In New York City, revelers began to gather on Friday afternoon in iconic Times Square in the heart of Manhattan to witness the countdown to just before midnight and the release of the ball and confetti that marks the entrance. in the new year.
Mayor Bill de Blasio had promised that the party would take place but with only 15,000 people in Times Square instead of 60,000, all masked and vaccinated.
Like a couple of African-Americans who came especially from Memphis (Tennessee): “To see the release of the ball is our dream and we were vaccinated for that”, admits to AFPTV Chroni Spokes.
PHOTO CRAIG RUTTLE, ASSOCIATED PRESS
In New York City, revelers began to gather on Friday afternoon in iconic Times Square in the heart of Manhattan to watch the countdown just before midnight.
US President Joe Biden on Friday called for unity in the New Year in a video message, hailing “extraordinary” Americans.
In Russia, President Vladimir Putin in his televised greetings mentioned the COVID-19 epidemic, without citing the figure of more than 600,000 dead established the day before by the national statistics agency ¬ twice the figure communicated by the government – which places the country among the most bereaved in the world.
Experts hope that the year 2022 will mark a new, less deadly phase of the pandemic.
The distribution of vaccines to about 60% of the world’s population offers a glimmer of hope, although some poor countries still have limited access and a segment of the population remains reluctant to do so.
But the World Health Organization foresees trying months ahead; its leader, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, saying he fears that Omicron “more transmissible, circulating at the same time as Delta, causes a tsunami of cases”.