![]() ![]() Pakistan said it had fully vaccinated 70 million of its 220 million people this year and Britain said it met its goal of offering a vaccine booster shot to all adults by Friday. ![]() The pandemic game-changer of 2021 - vaccinations - continued apace. The fact they may have a good night tonight, it has no impact.”Īirlines were also struggling as the year came to a close, cancelling thousands of flights after the virus struck flight crews and other personnel. “I’m really scared for our industry,” said restaurateur David Rabin, a partner in the Temple Bar, Skylark and other city venues who watched reservations and party bookings disappear this month. Yet by Thursday, rapper LL Cool J had dropped out of the New York telecast after a positive Covid-19 test, “The Music Man” was shuttered on Broadway after lead actor Hugh Jackman tested positive, and restaurant owners battered by staffing shortages and omicron cancellations throughout the holiday season struggled to stay open. Outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio, defending the event, said people need to see that New York is open for business. In New York, officials planned to allow just 15,000 people - vaccinated and masked - inside the perimeter around Times Square, a sliver of the 1 million people that typically squeeze into midtown to watch the famed ball drop. ![]() In the United States, officials took a mixed approach to the year-end revelry: nixing the audience at a countdown concert in Los Angeles, scaling it back in New York yet going full speed ahead in Las Vegas, where 300,000 people were expected for a fireworks show on the strip. More than 285 million people have been infected by the coronavirus worldwide since late 2019 and more than 5 million have died. The mostly muted New Year’s Eve celebrations around the world ushered in the fourth calendar year framed by the global pandemic. “It’s starting to become exhausting, because the waves come one after another.” Fouad Bouzana could only sigh Friday when asked what 2022 might bring. At the La Timone hospital in the southern French city of Marseille, Dr. New Year’s Eve, which used to be celebrated globally with a free-spirited wildness, felt instead like a case of deja vu, with the fast-spreading omicron variant again filing hospitals. Sorrow for the dead and dying, fear of more infections to come and hopes for an end to the coronavirus pandemic were - again - the bittersweet cocktail with which the world said good riddance to 2021 and ushered in 2022. The Associated Press has a piece this evening about the trepidation with which all corners of the globe are saying goodbye to 2021 and ringing in 2022. ![]()
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