Towards a New Year under the sign of Covid-19

The Covid-19 pandemic will weigh again this year on the New Year's festivities on Friday with restrictions in many countries, against the backdrop of a "tsunami" of contaminations putting pressure on health systems. Paris will not be a party, any more than Athens or Mexico. "Music will be banned" in bars and restaurants, warned Thanos Plevris, the Greek Minister of Health, on Wednesday in a televised message, in an attempt to limit the desire for outings of his fellow citizens for New Year's Eve. "Bars and restaurants will close at midnight. For New Year's Eve on December 31, they will be allowed to stay open until two in the morning, but still without music," said Thanos Plevris. No large New Year's Eve tables either in Greece, which recorded a new contamination record on Wednesday with 28,828 new cases: from this Thursday and until January 16, tables in restaurants will be limited to six people. In France, nightclubs will remain closed on the 31st, and this for several more weeks. And in Paris, for the New Year, the prefecture also announced the closure of drinking establishments on Saturday January 1 and Sunday January 2 from 2:00 a.m. “More than a million French people are currently positive for the coronavirus” and “10% of the French population is a contact case”, alerted, in a deep voice, the French Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, in front of the deputies.

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