Surging COVID cases make for somber Christmas

ROME (AP) — Christians around the world celebrated their second COVID-19 Christmas on Saturday with surging infections in many countries overwhelming hospitals, cancelling flights and curbing religious observances, even as coronavirus vaccines were more available than ever.

While some countries in Asia imposed restrictions to try to contain the highly contagious omicron variant, governments in Europe, the United States and elsewhere preached common sense despite reporting record daily cases this week, advising their citizens to use masks and voluntarily limit the size of holiday gatherings.

The head of intensive care at a hospital in Marseille, France, said most of the COVID-19 patients there over Christmas were unvaccinated, while his staff members are exhausted or can't work because they are infected.

“We're sick of this,” said Dr Julien Carvelli, the ICU chief at Marseille's La Timone Hospital, as his team spent another Christmas Eve tending to COVID-19 patients on breathing machines.

“We're afraid we won't have enough space.”

Thousands of people across England got a vaccine booster shot for Christmas as new cases in Britain hit another daily record of 122,186.

The Good Health Pharmacy in north London was one of dozens of vaccination sites that kept their doors open Saturday to administer “jingle jabs” amid a government push to offer booster shots to all adults by the end of the year.

In the United States, many churches cancelled planned in-person Christmas services, and for those that did have in-person worship, clergy reported smaller but significant attendance.

At the Dormition of the Virgin Mary Church in the Hamptons in Southampton, New York, attendance at the Christmas Eve Liturgy “was a third less than last year, the reality of the omicron virus diminishing the crowd, but not the fervour of the faithful present,” said the pastor, the Rev. Alex Karloutsos.

Pope Francis used his Christmas address to pray for some of those vaccines to reach the poorest countries.

While wealthy countries have inoculated as much as 90% of their adult populations, 8.9% of Africa's people are fully jabbed, making it the world's least-vaccinated continent,

“Grant health to the infirm and inspire all men and women of good will to seek the best ways possible to overcome the current health crisis and its effects,” Francis said from the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica.

On the other side of the globe, hundreds of thousands of people in the Philippines, Asia's largest Roman Catholic nation, spent Christmas without homes, electricity, or adequate food and water after a powerful typhoon left at least 375 people dead last week and devastated mostly central island provinces.

Governor Arthur Yap of hard-hit Bohol province, where more than 100 people died in the typhoon and about 150,000 houses were damaged or destroyed, asked foreign aid agencies to help provide temporary shelters and water-filtration systems to supplement Philippine government aid.

“There is overwhelming fear. There are no gifts, there were no Christmas Eve dinners. There is none of that today,” Yap told The Associated Press.

Yap said he was happy that many Filipinos could celebrate Christmas more safely after COVID-19 cases dropped, but he pleaded: “Please don't forget us.”

In South Korea, social distancing rules required churches to limit worshippers to 70% of seating capacity, and service attendees had to be fully vaccinated.

Australia also had a Christmas with a surge of COVID-19 cases, its worst of the pandemic, which forced states to reinstate mask mandates and other measures.

Christmas celebrations were subdued in much of India, with more decorations than crowds: Authorities reintroduced nighttime curfews and restrictions on gatherings of more than five people in big cities like New Delhi and Mumbai. People attended midnight Mass in Mumbai and elsewhere, but in smaller numbers.

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