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Omicron’s New Year’s cocktail: Sorrow, fear, hope for 2022

Published:Saturday | January 1, 2022 | 12:08 AM
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Fireworks explode over the ancient Parthenon temple at the Acropolis hill during New Year’s celebrations in Athens, Greece, on Saturday, January 1, 2022.
AP
Fireworks explode over the ancient Parthenon temple at the Acropolis hill during New Year’s celebrations in Athens, Greece, on Saturday, January 1, 2022.
Fireworks explode over St Basil’s Cathedral and the Kremlin with the Spasskaya Tower on an empty Red Square due to pandemic restrictions during to New Year’s celebrations, in Moscow, Russia, this morning.
AP
Fireworks explode over St Basil’s Cathedral and the Kremlin with the Spasskaya Tower on an empty Red Square due to pandemic restrictions during to New Year’s celebrations, in Moscow, Russia, this morning.
People celebrate the arrival of the year 2022 in Rome.
AP
People celebrate the arrival of the year 2022 in Rome.
People celebrate during New Year’s celebrations at Madrid’s Puerta del Sol in downtown Madrid, Spain, early Saturday morning.
AP
People celebrate during New Year’s celebrations at Madrid’s Puerta del Sol in downtown Madrid, Spain, early Saturday morning.
Spectators at the boulevard Unter den Linden watch fireworks as they celebrate the New Year near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, on Saturday morning.
AP
Spectators at the boulevard Unter den Linden watch fireworks as they celebrate the New Year near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, on Saturday morning.
left: People gather to celebrate the New Year around a Christmas tree in Lenin Square decorated for the holiday celebration in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, on Saturday, January 1, 2022.
AP
left: People gather to celebrate the New Year around a Christmas tree in Lenin Square decorated for the holiday celebration in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, on Saturday, January 1, 2022.
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PARIS (AP):

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.

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.

The mostly muted New Year’s Eve celebrations around the world ushered in the fourth calendar year framed by the global pandemic. More than 285 million people have been infected by the coronavirus worldwide since late 2019 and more than five million have died.

Here are scenes from countries around the world welcoming 2022 earlier this morning.