After a New Year’s Eve 2021 marked by surreal images of deserted streets and without particular agitation, the celebrations of the transition to 2022 were marked by the relative return of celebrations and scenes of festivities and jubilation in the four corners of the world.
If in 2019, we would never have thought we had to restrict the number of guests or stick a cotton swab in our nose to eat a raclette with friends, these gestures linked to the Covid-19 pandemic are now among the good ones. reflexes to adopt. But this does not mean that New Year’s Eve 2022 has not kept all its promises.
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Fireworks, return of revelers in the streets, on the beaches or in places of worship … We have compiled the images of New Years Eve 2021 and 2022 in five emblematic cities which show that in one year and despite contaminations which are on the rise, the situation has nevertheless evolved in the right direction.
To view the before / after, all you need to do is drag your mouse cursor from left to right, selecting the center line.
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The return of revelers to the Grand-Place in Brussels
December 31, 2020, Covid requires, the curfew from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. had left the Grand-Place empty. Only a few police officers were busy around the large Christmas tree, to ensure compliance with the rules in force to limit the pandemic on New Years Eve.
Just a year ago, the government called for New Years Eve to be celebrated “in a more sober way“. During evenings with Belgians, everyone was allowed to invite only a close contact to celebrate the end of 2020, with the exception of single people allowed to gather with two people.
Outside, gatherings were banned and bars and restaurants closed.
A year later, when restaurants and bars had to close their doors at 11 p.m., hundreds of revelers made their comeback around midnight on the emblematic square of Brussels. They sang the traditional count around the tree which seems to be the only common element between the two New Years Eve marked by the coronavirus.
Despite the ban on fireworks in the capital, detonations accompanied by colored lights lit the sky of the capital. The evening was also marked by 400 police interventions.
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The Champs-Élysées invaded again
In the French capital and despite the animation for the second consecutive year of the New Year’s fireworks on “the most famous avenue in the world”, this did not prevent many people from meeting on the Champs-Élysées.
However, a year earlier, the Parisian avenue had been left deserted because ofa compulsory curfew from 8 p.m. for all French people.
This year, unlike nightclubs, bars and restaurants were open on condition that they close their doors at 2 a.m. in the capital. As in many other French cities, meetings in the streets were also banned by the French authorities and the wearing of a mask was again made compulsory outdoors a few days before December 31.
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Euphoria takes over Times Square again
In New York, while it is traditional for a big New Year’s party to take place in Times Square, the transition to 2021 has been different. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the famous Manhattan plaza had remained closed to the public for the first time in decades.
But a year later, the “city that never sleeps” once again welcomed the crowd for its famous descent from the ball, its countdown and its release of confetti.
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To celebrate the year 2022, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio – succeeded by Eric Adams at midnight – 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.
And New Yorkers were there, turning the page after the exceptional New Year’s Eve of 2021.
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The return of fireworks to Copacabana
In Brazil, the second country most bereaved by the pandemic after the United States, some cities like Sao Paulo have canceled their New Year’s Eve celebration events. But this is not the case with Rio de Janeiro having broken anti-Covid rules for its celebrations.
This year, although the concerts were canceled and access to the neighborhood restricted, this did not prevent many revelers from enjoying a 16-minute fireworks display over the bay. Most of the people who attended the event were dressed in white as tradition dictates.
The turnout, however, was well below the 3 million people who gathered before the pandemic to attend the event. But the atmosphere had nothing to envy to the emptiness that had seized the beach a year earlier.
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A less foggy but more crowded Golden Temple in India
In the Indian town of Armritsar, custom dictates lhe Sikhs, who practice one of the country’s four religions, visit the Golden Temple. It is the most sacred sanctuary of their religion. On January 1, some people enter the sarovar, a sacred pool of water.
If due to the epidemic, many Indians had given up going to this sacred place on the first day of the year 2021, the images of 2022 show how the situation has returned to normal since with the exception fog, a little less dense, the crowd will have been much more important this year.
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In Indian Kashmir at a gathering of Hindu worshipers at Mata Vaishno Devi shrine, a stampede into the huge crowd resulted in the deaths of at least twelve pilgrims. Thirteen others are injured.
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