New measures, new reports and highlights: an update on the latest developments in the Covid 19 pandemic worldwide.

– End of the year under the sign of Covid –

Celebrations canceled or heavily framed, music banned, New Year’s Eve limited to the family “bubble”: the world is preparing to begin a third year of the pandemic in 2022.

From Seoul to San Francisco, the New Year celebrations have again been canceled or reduced.

Quebec reintroduced the nightly curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. across the French-speaking province on New Year’s Eve.

On the contrary, the celebrations of Rio de Janeiro or Sydney will continue. Dubai will even try to break the world record for the largest fireworks display.

In South Africa, the first country to report the new variant of Omicron, the curfew on the celebrations was lifted from midnight to 4 a.m.

– South Africa: behind the Omicron summit –

South Africa has announced that it has passed the peak of the Omicron wave with only a “marginal” increase in deaths as many countries have recorded record infections.

– Majority Omicron in France –

The Omicron variant is now the majority among Covid-19 infections in France, where the virus has experienced “significant progression” in recent days, said Public Health France.

“62.4% of the tests screened showed a profile compatible with the Omicron variant” at the beginning of the last week of the year, compared to 15% in the previous week, according to the agency.

The variant contributed to the surge in cases, which exceeded 200,000 a day in France on Wednesday and Thursday.

– Israel: 4th dose for the weakest –

Israel on Friday launched a campaign to give people at risk a fourth dose of the vaccine in hopes of mitigating the effects of a new wave caused by Omicron.

The country also received an initial shipment of anti-coronavirus pills from Pfizer on Thursday as contamination levels continue to rise.

Authorities identified more than 4,000 new cases on Thursday, a record since September that has not yet resulted in a significant increase in hospital admissions.

– More than 5.4 million dead –

The pandemic has killed at least 5,428,240 people worldwide since December 2019, according to an estimate made by AFP from official sources on Thursday in the middle of the day.

The United States is the country with the most survivors, with 824,339 deaths, followed by Brazil (618,984), India (481,080) and Russia (308,860).

The World Health Organization estimates that taking into account the excess mortality directly and indirectly linked to Covid-19, the number of victims of the pandemic could be two to three times higher than official.