The world celebrated the transition to the new year, with festivities canceled or severely framed due to Covid, entering a third year of the pandemic with an explosion of contaminations, but timid signs of hope for 2022. The symbolic milestone of one million daily cases of coronavirus was thus crossed in the last hours of the year 2021.
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Britain, the United States and even Australia, long sheltered from the pandemic, are breaking records of new cases.
And France in turn announced that Omicron was now the majority on its territory.
Nearly 200,000 new cases in France
The explosion of contaminations continues in France: for the first day of the year 2022, the country again marked a record rate, with 219,126 new official cases of Covid-19.
Among those hospitalized, 3,560 patients are in intensive care.
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For the fourth day in a row, France exceeds 200,000 cases of Covid-19.
This particularly high rate marks a second all-time record after Friday, which alone had 232,200 new contaminations.
Emmanuel Macron warned that day that the next few weeks would be particularly difficult in the face of a resurgence of the virus.
In France, the compulsory mask from the age of six in transport
To cope with this surge, the government wants to bet on the toughening of measures concerning children.
From Monday, wearing a mask will be compulsory from the age of six in domestic transport, according to a decree published on Saturday in the Official Journal.
This obligation, which until now concerned children from 11 years old, will apply in public transport, boats, planes, and vehicles, as well as in train stations, public transport stations and air terminals.
"Alert threshold" in Guadeloupe
The number of new cases of Covid-19 has quadrupled in four days in the French island of Guadeloupe, a rate "
far above the alert threshold
", the authorities announced.
As of December 31, the number of new cases accumulated over four days is 2,191 (against 543 cases over 7 days last week), for 18,300 people tested.
The 10-19 year olds and the 20-39 year old represent 65% of these new cases.
Learning to "live with" the virus, says London
New restrictions would only come "
as a last resort
" in England despite a surge in Omicron cases, UK Health Minister Sajid Javid said on Saturday. We must now learn, according to him, to "
live with
" the coronavirus. "
The number (of people) in intensive care units is stable and does not for the moment follow the trajectory that we saw last year during this period during the Alpha wave
," Sajid Javid said in a published column in the
Daily Mail
. His country, one of the most affected with more than 148,600 deaths from the pandemic, records contamination records every day (more than 189,000 in 24 hours on Friday).
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With the country in "
a much stronger position
" thanks to a massive vaccine booster campaign, the government has decided not to impose further holiday restrictions in England, unlike Scotland, Wales and the United Kingdom. 'North Ireland.
"
The restrictions on our freedom should only intervene as a last resort,
" Sajid Javid added in the tabloid.
Stressing "
the enormous health, social and economic cost of confinements
", he felt that it was necessary to give oneself the means to "
live with the virus
" through vaccination, an arsenal of treatments and massive screening.
Canada wants to suspend unemployment benefit for the unvaccinated
The Federal Minister of Employment announced on December 30 her desire to suspend employment insurance, the equivalent of unemployment benefits in Canada, for all people who have lost their job for refusing the anti-Covid injection.
Aid will henceforth be reserved for the vaccinated unemployed, with the exception of people with medical exemption.
"
The federal government believes that public aid is not intended to support people who lose their jobs by refusing the vaccine,
" said Carla Qualtrough.
Police in the Netherlands put an end to illegal party of hundreds
An illegal party brought together hundreds of people who came to celebrate the New Year in an old factory in the center of the Netherlands.
Ten police vans intervened to end the party, making several arrests.
Health restrictions are strict in the Netherlands, where a new "containment" was imposed on the population a week before Christmas in the face of a new wave of Covid-19 and the spread of the Omicron variant.
Local residents have identified many vehicles registered in France, Germany, Spain and Italy.
New York: festivities maintained in Times Square
Despite the Covid which strikes again, the
“city that never sleeps”
celebrated the New Year on the iconic Times Square in the heart of Manhattan, with its famous descent from the ball, its countdown and its release of confetti.