Muted parties ring in 2022 around globe

Sorrow for the dead and dying, fear of more infections to come and hopes for an end to the coronavirus pandemic were — again — the bittersweet cocktail with which the world said good riddance to 2021 and ushered in 2022.

New Year’s Eve, which used to be celebrated globally with a freespirited wildness, felt instead like a case of deja vu, with the fast-spreading omicron variant again filing hospitals. In London, officials said as many as 1 in 15 people were infected with the virus in the week before Christmas, while hospitalizations of COVID-19 patients in the U.K. rose 44% in the last week.

In Russia, President Vladimir Putin mourned the dead, praised Russians for their strength in difficult times and soberly warned that the pandemic “isn’t retreating yet.” “I would like to express words of sincere support to all those who lost their dear ones,“Putin said in a televised address broadcast just before midnight in each of Russia’s 11 time zones.

Because of omicron’s virulence, cities canceled traditional New Year’s Eve concerts and fireworks displays to avoid drawing large crowds. Australia went ahead with its celebrations despite an explosion in virus cases. Thousands of fireworks lit up the sky over Sydney’s Harbor Bridge and Opera House at midnight. Because of the surge, crowds were far smaller than in pre-pandemic years, when as many as 1 million revelers would crowd inner Sydney.

In India, millions of people rang in the new year from their homes, with nighttime curfews and other restrictions taking the fizz out of celebrations in large cities including New Delhi and Mumbai.

In the U.S., officials took a mixed approach to the year-end revelry: nixing the audience at a countdown concert in Los Angeles, scaling it back in New York yet going full speed ahead in Las Vegas, where 300,000 people were expected for a fireworks show on the strip.