The world faces the New Year with more than a million cases daily

Millions of people around the world were preparing on Thursday for a New Year’s Eve celebrations drastically limited by the blazing spread of covid-19, which in the week of December 23 to 29 surpassed the symbolic milestone of one million daily infections.

In the last seven days, an average of 1,045,000 new infections were detected daily, 46% more than the previous week, according to an AFP count on Thursday established from official balance sheets.

The coronavirus, detected two years ago and declared a global pandemic in March 2020, has already killed more than 5.4 million people, triggered an economic crisis and forced societies to live between intermittent lockdowns.

So far, the explosion of cases has not translated into an increase in the number of deaths, which has fallen for three weeks in the world.

But the variant omicronAlthough it is considered to cause milder symptoms than the previous strains, it has raised the infection to record levels in recent days.

From Mexico to Greece and from France to Brazil, the strong rebound is forcing governments to reimpose restrictions.

-‘Music, forbidden’-"Music will be forbidden" in bars and restaurants, which will close at midnight and at 2 on the 31st" warned the Greek Minister of Health, Thanos Plevris, to try to limit the desire to leave his compatriots on the occasion of the turn of the year.

The Hellenic country registered a new maximum of daily infections on Wednesday, in the path of other countries they have been beating their maximum of daily cases in the pandemic for days such as France, the United Kingdom or Spain.

In Spain, public festivities were canceled in most large cities, except Madrid, where a public celebration limited to 7,000 people is scheduled, compared to 18,000 in 2019 before the pandemic hit Europe.

The clubs will be closed in France For several weeks and the bars of Paris will have to close the blind at 2 in the morning, while, from Friday, it will be mandatory to wear a mask outdoors for everyone over 11 years old.

In Mexico City and Sao Paulo, the authorities canceled the New Year’s celebrations due to the coronavirus.

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Meanwhile, in Rio de Janeiro, the mythical Copacabana beach, which normally gathers more than 3 million people at New Year’s Eve, this year will see its capacity limited, it will not hold concerts and the traditional fireworks will be fired in nine different locations in the city. city ​​to avoid an excessive concentration of public.

Similar restrictions are multiplied by many countries of the world in the face of the highly contagious new variant.

On Thursday, the National Health Service of Britain announced that it would start opening temporary field hospitals to contain a possible excess of hospitalized patients in England.

‘Prepare to be expelled’ –Indonesia, which has reported more than 4.2 million confirmed cases, warned that foreign travelers will be deported from the resort island of Bali if they are caught violating sanitary rules during the Christmas period.

"Prepare to be kicked out"Bali’s immigration office chief Jamaruli Manihuruk told AFP. Bali has banned carnivals, fireworks and gatherings of more than 50 people during the Christmas and New Year period.

In saudi arabia, the authorities reimposed social distancing measures in the Great Mosque of the holy city of Mecca, after registering the highest number of infections in months.

"I am extremely concerned that omicron, being more transmissible and circulating at the same time as delta, is causing a tsunami of cases"WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned on Wednesday.

-‘At the edge of collapse’-"Health systems are on the brink of collapse"added the head of WHO.

The spike in infections has also reached U.S, which registered an all-time high of more than 265,000 daily cases, and to Latin America and the Caribbean.

The region now has more than 47 million infections and nearly 1.6 million deaths.

In ChinaResidents of the city of Xi’an, where 13 million people remain confined, residents complained of not finding enough food, despite the fact that Beijing said the situation was under control.

State television showed images of workers in hazmat suits sorting eggs, meat and vegetables, before delivering food to residents door-to-door.

"I live with … a bowl of oatmeal every day, just to stay alive"a resident surnamed Wang told AFP.

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