Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a large crowd is expected to return to Times Square to welcome in the New Year. The beginning of 2021 was celebrated in a low-key, sparsely attended affair.
During his daily press briefing, the mayor revealed that full details on COVID-19 precautionary measures like masking and proof of vaccination rules for the New Year’s Eve celebration will be announced Tuesday, but declared the festivities ringing in 2022 would be “large” and “wonderful.”
This past year’s mostly new year celebration was the first Eve ball drop in Times Square since 1907 without a massive amount of in-person spectators who gather at Manhattan’s Crossroads of the World.
Just a few hundred people came to Times Square, which on the final day of 2020 turned in a ghost town as officials closed off the area where the ball drops.