The event will return at “full strength” after pared-back festivities last year, Mayor Bill de Blasio said. People will have to show proof that they are fully vaccinated to attend.
A big, strong, full-strength celebration. It’s coming back this New Year’s Eve, Times Square, everyone come on down. We’re celebrating. [blowing horns]Excellent. Excellent harmony, everyone. You guys did great. Hundreds of thousands of people were there to celebrate. We can finally get back together again. It’s going to be amazing. It’s going to be a joy for this city. Now, let’s do it the right way, and let’s do it the safe way. We want to welcome all those hundreds of thousands of folks, but everyone needs to be vaccinated.
As the clock runs out on 2021, New York City will ring in the new year with festivities meant to signal its post-pandemic rebirth: Once again, an untold number of hardy souls will descend on Times Square, braving the cold, the crowds, and the police cordons to watch the ball drop at midnight on New Year’s Eve.
After a scaled-down celebration last year, the famously frigid event will return at “full strength,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Tuesday. It will be Mr. de Blasio’s final act running New York City, after eight years in office, and serve as a prelude to his possible bid for governor next year.
“We want to welcome all those hundreds of thousands of folks, but everyone needs to be vaccinated,” Mr. de Blasio said. “Join the crowd, join the joy, join a historic moment as New York City provides further evidence to the world that we are 100 percent back.”
The New Year’s celebration will come four months after lightning cut short a star-studded “homecoming concert” that was also designed to signify the city’s comeback. Proof of vaccination was also required to attend that event, which drew thousands to Central Park.
The New Year’s celebration will present a logistical, and perhaps philosophical, puzzle for the city’s police officers, who fought the mayor’s vaccination mandate for public servants. The police will have to not only contend with crowd control but also confirm that people are vaccinated.
“We defer to the Police Department on operational issues like this unless it impacts the guy and gal on the street,” said John Nuthall, a spokesman for the Police Benevolent Association, the union that represents the city’s police officers.
In Times Square, news that the ball drop would be open to the public again was met with enthusiasm, at least among tourists.
Anyone who is unable to be inoculated because of a disability will have to show proof of a negative coronavirus test within 72 hours of the event. Children younger than 5, who are not yet eligible for vaccines, will have to be accompanied by a vaccinated adult. Masks will be required for anyone who is not vaccinated, said Tom Harris, the president of the Times Square Alliance.
Asked at a news conference why vaccination would be mandatory to attend the ball drop when it is not required for many other outdoor activities in New York, Mr. de Blasio said a crowded, hours-long event draws people from around the country and the world required greater precaution.
“When you’re outdoors with a few hundred thousand people packed close together for hours on end, it’s a different reality,” Mr. de Blasio said. “You’re talking about a lot of people really close for long periods of time. It makes sense to protect everyone.”
The announcement comes as Mr. de Blasio is preparing for his successor, Eric Adams, to take over as the next mayor of New York City, and the ball drop will coincide with Mr. de Blasio’s final day in office. That will leave any fallout from the event in the hands of Mr. Adams, who will be inaugurated on Jan. 1.
Several public health experts have cautioned that the constantly changing nature of the coronavirus makes it difficult to predict where the city might be in terms of cases by the end of the year. Of course, many who flock to watch the ball drop aren’t actually from New York at all.
As of Tuesday, 74.6 percent of New Yorkers had received at least one dose of a vaccine and 68.2 percent were fully vaccinated. The number of coronavirus cases in the city has increased recently and remains very high, but hospitalization rates have stayed low.
Dr. Ashish K. Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, said Mr. de Blasio’s plans for New Year’s Eve seemed “very reasonable.”
“Vaccines make outdoor events, which are already pretty low risk, exceedingly low risk,” Dr. Jha said.
“It was an incredibly crowded gathering, and everyone in that context was required to be vaccinated or have one negative test,” Dr. Jha said. “We have evidence that there was little to no spread.”
But Dr. Jha did caution Mr. de Blasio to give himself an escape clause should case increase sharply in the days before New Year’s Eve, requiring the return of the celebration to be pushed to next year.
Some experts pointed out that the risk might not be contained within Times Square. People will also have to consider what happens before and after the ball drop, with people going in and out of nearby bars and restaurants to eat, warm up and use the restroom. But New York City, unlike many locales, requires those eating and drinking indoors to provide proof of vaccination.
Some major restrictions against international travelers were recently eased by the United States, so the ball drop is likely to attract revelers from around the world, drawing together people from areas of both lower and higher rates of the virus.
Denis Nash, a professor of epidemiology for the City University of New York Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy, said that although the vaccination requirement meant the risk of transmission at the event would be greatly reduced, those who travel from outside the city to attend the ball drop should consider the possibility of bringing the virus back to their hometowns.
“There will be people coming from places that don’t have much Covid going on right now,” Mr. Nash said. “We need to be thinking about seeding, outbreaks, and spread, not just in our own backyards but everywhere.”
The news prompted a range of reactions from New Yorkers in Times Square on Tuesday.
Other major cities around the world have called off their New Year’s Eve celebrations. In October, London’s mayor said that the city’s end-of-year fireworks display would be canceled and replaced with a different kind of celebration, while Amsterdam this week canceled its celebrations in response to a surge in coronavirus cases.
Munich has also canceled its celebrated Christmas market. “The dramatic situation in our hospitals and the exponentially increasing infection figures leave me no other choice,” the city’s mayor, Dieter Reiter, told reporters on Tuesday.
But Dr. Jha said that he believed it made sense for New York City to move forward.
“We have to get back to doing things that are really meaningful,” Dr. Jha said. “New Year’s Eve in Times Square is kind of an iconic American celebration, and I think we’re at the point in the pandemic where we can do it safely.” ♦
Courtesy: The New York Times
