PARIS (AP) Sorrow for the dead and dying, fear of more infections to come and hopes for an end to the coronavirus pandemic were again the bittersweet cocktail with which the world said good riddance to 2021 and ushered in 2022.

New Years Eve, which used to be celebrated globally with a free-spirited wildness, felt instead like a case of deja vu, with the fast-spreading omicron variant again filling hospitals.

At the La Timone hospital in the southern French city of Marseille, Dr. Fouad Bouzana could only sigh when asked what 2022 might bring.

Its starting to become exhausting, he said, because the waves come one after another.

The mostly muted New Years Eve celebrations around the world ushered in the fourth calendar year framed by the global pandemic. More than 285 million people have been infected by the coronavirus worldwide since late 2019 and more than 5 million have died.