The new epidemic waves have forced billions of people to celebrate the New Year in the privacy of their homes and to follow the celebrations virtually, after months of restrictions and even lockdown.
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AUltra-reduced influence on Times Square in New York, almost empty beaches in Rio de Janeiro and deserted Champs-Elysées in Paris: many countries around the world have muted New Year’s celebrations, entering 2021 on Friday under the influence of the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 1.8 million people around the world.
The new epidemic waves have forced billions of people to celebrate the New Year in the privacy of their homes and to follow the celebrations virtually, after months of restrictions and even lockdown.
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In Sydney, Australia’s largest city, the famous New Year’s Eve fireworks display was fired at 13:00 GMT over the Bay, albeit with almost no spectators following the appearance of a recent source of contamination in the north of the city which totals some 150 cases.
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In New York, the Manhattan neighborhood was cordoned off and revelers encouraged to follow from home the televised countdown and the shows of Jennifer Lopez and Gloria Gaynor, responsible for performing at the age of 77 her famous disco track “I will survive” ( ” I will Survive “).
In Times Square, which is usually overflowing with euphoric revelers for the traditional “fall of the ball” in a shower of confetti, the crowd has been replaced this year by a group of frontline workers against the pandemic, specially invited, and separated by barricades to enforce social distancing.
In Brazil, the second country most bereaved by the pandemic, the festivities were canceled this year in Rio de Janeiro, which usually hosts one of the biggest New Year’s parties in the world. The famous Copacabana beach found itself almost empty at the stroke of midnight, with revelers being kept away by the police.
However, across town, Brazilians lit up the skyline with their own fireworks. And protesters shouted “Get out Bolsonaro!” From their windows in Rio and Sao Paulo, the two largest cities in Brazil, to protest against what they consider to be disastrous management of the pandemic by far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
In China, thousands of Wuhan residents fervently celebrated the transition to 2021, just one year after the first cases of coronavirus were reported to the WHO in this city of 11 million people. “It’s something we can never forget,” a Wuhan resident named Xu Du told AFP. “We were locked up for months (…) but we survived”.
In Hong Kong, despite the restrictions, a few revelers have ventured to the Victoria Harbor waterfront to take selfies.
In Russia, President Vladimir Putin acknowledged in his New Year’s speech that a second wave of infections is hitting the nation. “Unfortunately, the epidemic has not yet been completely stopped. The fight against the epidemic does not stop for a minute, ”he said.
Shortly before, a dozen people had, as every year, swam in the icy waters of Lake Baikal in Siberia, braving extreme temperatures oscillating between -26 and -35ºC.
Paris has offered the image of its empty Champs-Elysées, when hundreds of thousands of people usually flock there on the last evening of the year. About twenty police officers stopped the rare vehicles to check the derogatory certificates of the drivers and to verbalize the offenders.
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