London's traditional New Year's Eve fireworks are off, but the city is working on a different kind of celebration for people to enjoy at home. Photo / Getty Images
London's traditional New Year's Eve fireworks are off, but the city is working on a different kind of celebration for people to enjoy at home. Photo / Getty Images
While many will be happy to put 2020 behind them, there will be no fireworks and no fanfare as we enter 2021 - at least not in London.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has announced the iconic fireworks display and New Year's Eve celebrations will not go ahead in London this year, as coronavirus cases continue to rise across the UK.
Khan said there would be "nothing happening" in London to mark the end of the year as the city "can't afford" to have crowds congregating.
London's New Year celebrations attract tens of thousands of people every year who celebrate alongside the banks of the Thames and watch the fireworks display.
"I can tell you there will not be fireworks on New Year's Eve this year like in previous years; we simply can't afford to have the numbers of people who congregate on New Year's Eve congregating," the mayor told LBC.
Khan says the city is working on a different type of celebration, which people can enjoy from home.
"What we're working on, we're not in a position to explain what it is yet, but what we're working on is something that people can enjoy from the comfort and safety of their living rooms on TV. As soon as we've managed to bottom that out I'll be letting Londoners know and people across the country," he said.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson says a second wave of coronavirus is coming, on a day when the government reported 4322 new confirmed cases, the highest since early May.
Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson visits the construction site of the new vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre (VMIC) under construction on the Harwell science and innovations campus near Didcot, England, this week. Photo / AP
Speaking at a vaccine manufacturing centre under construction near Oxford, Johnson said: "We are seeing it in France, in Spain, across Europe - it has been absolutely, I'm afraid, inevitable we were going to see it in this country."
The weekly survey released on Friday by the Office for National Statistics revealed an average of 6000 people in England were estimated as newly infected from September 4-10, about double the previous week.
England is preparing for more restrictions on gatherings and other activities in several areas of the country. There is growing speculation Britain may be sliding toward a lockdown in the coming weeks, partly because the testing regime is struggling to cope with higher demand.
The UK recorded 27 deaths on Friday, bringing the government's official tally of deaths from Covid-19 to 41,732.
