ANOTHER COVID CHRISTMAS BRINGS ANXIETY, OPTIMISM

Christmas arrived around the world Saturday amid a surge in COVID-19 infections that kept many families apart, overwhelmed hospitals and curbed religious observances as the pandemic was poised to stretch into a third year.

Yet, there were homilies of hope, as vaccines and other treatments become more available.

Pope Francis used his Christmas address to pray for more vaccines to reach the poorest countries. While wealthy countries have inoculated as much as 90 percent of their adult populations, 8.9 percent of Africa’s people are fully jabbed, making it the world’s least-vaccinated continent.

In the United States, many churches canceled in-person services, but for those that did have inperson worship, clerics reported smaller but significant attendance.

“Our hopes for a normal Christmas have been tempered by Omicron this year . still filled with uncertainties and threats that overshadow us,” the Rev. Ken Boller told his parishioners during midnight Mass at the Church of St. Francis Xavier in New York City. “Breakthrough used to be a happy word for us, until it was associated with COVID. And in the midst of it all, we celebrate Christmas.”

St. Patrick’s Church in Hubbard, Ohio, held Mass on Christmas Eve in a nearby high school because of a church fire this year. The Mass drew about 550 people, said Youngstown Bishop David Bonnar, who presided.

Thousands of people across Britain got a vaccine booster shot for Christmas as new cases hit another daily record of 122,186. The Good Health Pharmacy in north London was one of dozens of sites that stayed open Saturday to administer “jingle jabs” amid a government push to offer booster shots to all adults by the end of the year.

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

“We’re sick of this,” said Dr. Julien Carvelli, the ICU chief at 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.”

COVID-19 testing continued unimpeded in some places, while other sites closed for the day.

Lines that in previous days wrapped around the block at a small testing center in Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood shrank considerably Saturday.

Swelling numbers of cases in Florida made tests popular. Florida hit a new case record for the second day in a row.

LARS HAGBERG AP Korie Smith, 8, cringes as her big sister, Mattie Smith, 10, receives her vaccine during a drivethru COVID-19 vaccine clinic at St. Lawrence College in Kingston, Ontario, earlier this month.