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NEW YORK: New York City’s Times Square was barricaded on Thursday (December 31), and only a handful of guests, including healthcare workers and others from the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, were allowed to enter to watch the New Years Eve ball drop. in person.
Everyone else should stay home and watch the festivities reduced on television, Mayor Bill de Blasio said, with dozens of events in the United States either reduced or moved online.
Tens of thousands of people often fill the blocks around Times Square, standing for hours in the cold at the focal point of America’s New Year’s Eve celebrations, waiting for a crystal ball to slowly descend in the closing seconds of the year.
Police will only allow a few dozen in this year, wearing masks and no signs of fever required for entry, including Bronx-born singer Jennifer Lopez and Gloria Gaynor, who will sing her classic album I Will Survive for a few dozens. frontline workers and their families.
Organizers have invited a grocery store worker, a building doorman, a pizza delivery boy, and doctors and nurses, including Sandra Lindsay, the New York nurse who became the first recipient of a coronavirus vaccine. in the United States out of a trial earlier this month.
More than 25,000 New Yorkers have been killed by COVID-19 this year as the city at one point grappled with the world’s deadliest outbreak in the spring.
“It’s actually going to be possibly the most special New Year’s Eve, the most moving, the most moving,” de Blasio, who will press the button to start the descent of the crystal ball, told reporters. “In 2021, we are going to show people what it looks like to recover, to come back.”
As new daily case counts continue to rise in the United States, bars, restaurants, and other hangouts are either closed or have very limited capacity.
In Las Vegas, Boston and beyond, official fireworks displays were canceled. Organizers of Boston’s annual First Night arts festival on New Year’s Eve have organized six hours of live performances streamed online by local musicians and artists.
