The symbolic milestone of one million daily contaminations by COVID-19 in the world was crossed for the first time during the week of December 23 to 29, a few hours from the New Year’s festivities, on which the pandemic will weigh once again .
On average, 1,045,000 new daily cases were detected over the period, up 46% from the previous week, according to an AFP count on Thursday established from reports communicated by each country. The previous record of 817,000 daily cases was recorded between April 23 and 29, 2021.
Faced with this “tsunami” of contamination which is putting health systems under pressure, many cities, such as Paris or Athens, have decided to frame the New Year’s celebrations, in addition to the measures taken in recent days to try to reduce the circulation of the coronavirus.
And some have even canceled the planned festivities, like many Brazilian cities, including São Paulo, the largest metropolis in Latin America.
In France, where for the second consecutive day, Thursday, was exceeded the threshold of 200,000 new cases in 24 hours, nightclubs, closed since December 10, will keep their doors closed for at least the first three weeks of January.
In Paris, the mask becomes mandatory again in the streets on Friday as in almost the entire Paris region, and drinking establishments will not be able to open after 2 a.m. on the 1st.er and January 2.
In Greece, bars and restaurants will have to close at 2 a.m. on New Year’s Eve, an exceptional measure because, on other days, they will close at midnight. Tables in restaurants are limited to six people until January 16. And music is prohibited there.
In Spain, the festivities are canceled in most regions, and nine of the ten most populous cities will not celebrate the ” campanadas “, The bells of the passage to the new year. Tradition has it that the Spaniards swallow twelve grapes at the sound of the stroke of midnight.
Only Madrid maintained a minimum ceremony in the famous Puerta del Sol square, with a capacity limited to 7,000 people – masked -, against 18,000 in 2019, in a pre-pandemic period.
In Mexico City, the city hall canceled New Year’s celebrations, and Cyprus banned dancing in public places.
For his part, Pope Francis has given up his traditional New Year’s visit to the nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square on Friday.
In Germany, where nightclubs will remain closed for New Year’s Eve, private meetings of more than ten people are prohibited, even for the vaccinated. For the unvaccinated, the limit drops to two members of different outbreaks.
But German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach warned that these new restrictions would “not be enough [aient] not ”in the face of the Omicron variant.
Falling dead
More than 85% of current infections are concentrated in two regions where Omicron has a strong presence: Europe (4,022,000 cases in the last seven days) as well as the United States and Canada (2,264,000 cases). Only Asia (268,000 cases, or 12%) has seen the pandemic recede over the past week.
In Europe, several countries are breaking contamination records, such as Iceland or Finland, which has led the latter to suspend the vaccination passport to access certain events, deeming it insufficient.
In Denmark, which currently has the largest number of new cases in the world in relation to its population, the threshold of 20,000 additional infections was exceeded Thursday for the second day in a row.
Spain also smashed its record Thursday, with 161,688 new cases in 24 hours.
With more than 265,000 daily cases on average for a week, the United States also faces a record of infections.
US health officials have recommended, including those vaccinated, to avoid cruises due to the sharp increase in cases on board ships since Omicron’s arrival.
The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday evoked a “tsunami” putting “immense pressure on an exhausted health workforce and health systems on the verge of collapse”, two years after the start of a pandemic with more than 5.4 million deaths.
British hospitals, “on a war footing” against Omicron, will set up temporary structures to open up to 4000 additional beds to prepare for a wave of admissions. In England, more than 10,000 people were hospitalized with COVID-19, a first since early March.
In Italy, too, the situation is tense. “We are overwhelmed with requests for hospitalizations […], the pressure is constant ”, told AFP the Dr Marchese, health director of the Casalpalocco hospital, in the suburbs of Rome, which currently accommodates 111 patients with a capacity of 120 beds, including 35 in intensive care. “This situation has been going on for roughly a month already. We are systematically full. “
So far, the explosion of the pandemic has not resulted in an increase in the number of deaths, on the contrary down for three weeks in the world.
China, which records an epidemic outbreak within 40 days of the Beijing Winter Olympics, has taken more radical measures.
After the city of Xi’an, subjected for eight days to quarantine and which is now experiencing supply difficulties, several tens of thousands of inhabitants of a district of the agglomeration of Yan’an, 300 kilometers from Xi ‘an, were also confined.