The world celebrated the transition to 2022 on Saturday with festivities often restricted and marked by anxiety by the explosion of Covid contaminations, despite the hope of a better year and an exit from the pandemic.
New York marked the event in Times Square with a small crowd, Paris gave up its fireworks display due to the explosion of Omicron variant cases, and the London fireworks show was shown on television to discourage onlookers.
In Rome, Pope Francis called on Saturday, from his window in St. Peter’s Square in Rome, to end wars and violence.
“There is no need to be defeated and complain, but to roll up your sleeves to build peace,” he said. “We need peace”.
The past twelve months have seen the arrival of a new American president, dreams of democracy fade from Afghanistan to Burma, via Hong Kong or Russia, and the first Olympic Games without spectators.
But it is the pandemic that once again ruled the daily lives of most of humanity. The symbolic milestone of one million daily cases of coronavirus worldwide was crossed in the last hours of the year 2021, after the emergence of the particularly contagious Omicron variant, and more than 5.4 million people have died since the virus was first identified in China in December 2019.
Great Britain, the United States and even Australia, long protected from the pandemic, are breaking records of new cases.
France in turn announced Thursday that Omicron was in the majority on its territory. In his wishes to the nation, French President Emmanuel Macron warned that “the coming weeks will be difficult” but that there were “real reasons to hope” and that “2022 may be the year of release of the epidemic ”.
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.
From Seoul to Mexico City and San Francisco, many festivities have once again been canceled or severely restricted.
In Paris, where the traditional fireworks display has been canceled, thousands of tourists and onlookers – far fewer than before the pandemic – strolled along the avenue des Champs Elysées, lined with twinkling trees, where the police controlled the wearing of the mask again compulsory.
“Everything is closed in the Netherlands, so it’s better here. I’m going to stay until midnight, see the lights, then we don’t really know, ”explained Koen, a 22-year-old Dutch tourist.
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.
In Rome, the particularly mild temperatures this year made traditional dives in the Tiber less intimidating, although only four brave people tried the experience under the amused eyes of onlookers.
In Sydney, a city that usually boasts of being the ‘New Year’s Capital of the World’, crowds were unusually small on 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 reduced 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.
Only a limited number of revelers – most of them 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”.
In New York, only 15,000 masked and vaccinated people, instead of 60,000, had been allowed to regroup in the iconic Times Square, in the heart of Manhattan, to watch the countdown just before midnight and the release of the ball and confetti that mark the start of the new year.
“Seeing the release of the ball is our dream and we got vaccinated for that,” said Chroni Spokes, who came specially from Memphis, Tennessee.
US President Joe Biden on Friday called for unity in a video message, saying he was “more optimistic” than ever. “Every crisis we have faced, we have turned it into an opportunity to be a stronger and better nation,” he said.
In Russia, President Vladimir Putin in his televised greetings mentioned the Covid 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.
Globally, the distribution of vaccines to about 60% of the population offers a glimpse 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”.