New Year / New Year welcomed with fireworks show in Australia; video surfaces

Sydney: New Zealand and Australia have rung in 2021 with a spectacular fireworks display and light show in Auckland and Sydney. The South Pacific island nation Samoa was the first to mark the new year, followed by New Zealand and Australia.

New Zealand, which has won plaudits for its handling of the coronavirus, kicked off its new year's celebrations with Skycity fireworks and Vector Lights on the Auckland Harbour Bridge. 

Despite the international border closures, months of zero recorded Covid-19 cases in the community has let life in New Zealand return to relative normality.

Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, New York’s Times Square to Sydney Harbor, big public blowouts have been turned into TV-only shows and digital events. Fireworks displays have also been cancelled from the Las Vegas Strip to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

#WATCH | Australia welcomes the New Year with fireworks show; visuals from Sydney

(Courtesy: Reuters) pic.twitter.com/vaOq5l7zdQ

— ANI (@ANI) December 31, 2020

Even the private New Year parties in some places are restricted.

New Year's Eve celebrations in Sydney

Fireworks explode over the boats and Sydney Harbour Bridge during downsized New Year's Eve celebrations due to Covid-19 pandemic in Australia. But there weren't the scenes of revellers embracing as Aukland - Sydney's new year fireworks display was crowd-free.

Spend New Year's eve safely at home: British PM

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has urged people to mark New Year's Eve today from the safety of their homes as Covid-19 lockdown in the United Kingdom was expanded amid the new virus strain scare and a continuing spike in infection rates across the country.

"I must ask you to follow the rules where you live and see in the New Year safely at home. That means not meeting up with friends or family indoors unless they are in the same household or support bubble, and avoiding large gatherings of any kind," said Johnson.

"We are still in the tunnel of this pandemic, the light, however, is not merely visible; thanks to an extraordinary feat of British engineering, if you like, the tunnel has been shortened and we are moving faster through it, and that gives me great confidence about the future in the spring,? he added.