In many places, New Year’s Eve celebrations are muted or canceled for a second year due to a surge of coronavirus infections, this time driven by the highly contagious omicron variant.
Because of where the international date line sits, countries in Asia and the Pacific region are among the first to usher in each new year.
Across Japan, many people planned to take new year trips to spend time with their families. On New Year’s Eve, people thronged temples and shrines, most of them wearing masks. South Korean authorities also planned to close many beaches and other tourist attractions along the east coast, which usually swarm with people hoping to catch the year’s first sunrise. On Friday, South Korea said it will extend tough distancing rules for another two weeks.
But some places, including Goa, a tourist paradise, and Hyderabad, an information technology hub, have been spared from night curfews thanks to smaller numbers of infections, although other restrictions still apply. In Hong Kong, about 3,000 people planned to attend a New Year’s Eve concert featuring local celebrities including boy band Mirror. The concert will be the first big New Year’s Eve event held since 2018, after events were canceled in 2019 due to political strife and last year because of the pandemic.
Popular temples in the eastern Chinese cities of Nanjing, Hangzhou and other major cities canceled traditional New Year’s Eve “lucky bell-ringing” ceremonies and asked the public to stay away.
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