The world is celebrating the transition to 2022 with often restricted festivities, against the backdrop of an explosion in COVID contaminations, and mourning in India where 12 people have died in a crowd movement during traditional New Year’s prayers.
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The symbolic milestone of one million daily cases of coronavirus in the world was crossed in the last hours of the year 2021, after the emergence of the Omicron variant, which is particularly contagious, 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”.
The Kiribati Islands in the Pacific were the first to celebrate the New Year from 10:00 GMT on Friday.
In Indian Kashmir, a stampede around 2:45 a.m. local time (9:15 p.m. GMT) left at least 12 dead and thirteen injured at Mata Vaishno Devi shrine, one of the busiest Hindu shrines in northern India.
“The toll could be heavier because the road leading to the shrine located at the top of a hill was crowded with worshipers trying to get there during the traditional New Year prayers,” said a representative of the authorities.
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 Elysées glittering, where the police controlled the wearing of the mask, again compulsory.
“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 the Puerta del Sol brought together some 7,000 people to swallow grapes to the sound of the twelve strokes 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.
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,” Alejandra Luna, a 28-year-old Colombian tourist told AFP, “but it’s calm, I like it”.
“Our dream”
In New York City, revelers began to gather on Friday night in iconic Times Square in the heart of Manhattan to watch the countdown just before midnight and the release of the ball and confetti that marks the entrance to 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.
US President Joe Biden on Friday called for unity in a video message: “As we move into the New Year, I’m more optimistic about America’s future than I have ever been (.. .) Every crisis we have faced, we have turned it into an opportunity to be a stronger and better nation ”.
In Russia, President Vladimir Putin in his televised greetings mentioned the COVID epidemic, without citing the figure of more than 600.00 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”.