Times Square will regain its normal luster on New Year’s Eve after two years of pandemic protocols for the nation’s ultimate way to end a year.

The 2021 edition allowed just a handful of first responders and their families to Times Square as the event was mostly made for TV. Last year’s ball drop allowed thousands, but attendees had to provide proof of vaccination. The ball drop came amid a spike in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.

While COVID-19 remains a deadly virus, it is a ubiquitous part of life. Although COVID-19 is causing an average of 300 deaths per day, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, the virus was responsible for killing over 2,000 a day nationwide this time a year ago.

“The New Year offers people a unique chance to reflect and simultaneously look forward by defining their goals and dreams for a better future,” said Tom Harris, president of the Times Square Alliance. “Revelers celebrating in Times Square and everyone watching on TV will kick off the new year with hope and joy as they watch confetti fall from the sky, filled with people’s wishes and aspirations for a new year.”

Earlier this week, officials announced that Chelsea Cutler, JVKE, Jax, Ava Max, J-Hope, Osmani Garcia, New Edition, Sech and Duran Duran will be lead performers at this year’s event.

This year’s ball weighs 11,875 pounds and is 12 feet in diameter. It’s made up of 2,688 Waterford Crystal triangles, which are bolted to 576 LED models attached to its aluminum frame.

The ball will go up at 6 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. It begins descending one minute before midnight.

The ball drop has been an annual tradition since 1907. That year’s ball weighed 700 pounds.

NEW YORK —

A woman was pushed to her death in front of a subway train at the Times Square station Saturday, police said, a little more than a week after the mayor and governor announced plans to boost subway policing and outreach to homeless people in New York City's streets and trains.

The man believed responsible fled the scene but turned himself in to transit police a short time later, Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said at a news conference with Mayor Eric Adams at the station.

The 40-year-old victim, identified as Michelle Alyssa Go of New York, was waiting for a southbound R train around 9:40 a.m. when she was apparently shoved, according to police.

“This incident was unprovoked, and the victim does not appear to have had any interaction with the subject,” Sewell said.

A second woman told police the man had approached her minutes earlier and she feared he would push her onto the tracks.

“He approaches her and he gets in her space. She gets very, very alarmed,” Assistant Chief Jason Wilcox said, describing the earlier encounter. “She tries to move away from him and he gets close to her, and she feels that he was about to physically push her onto the train. As she’s walking away she witnesses the crime where he pushes our other victim in front of the train.”

Police on Saturday night identified the suspect as 61-year-old Simon Martial. Martial, who police said is homeless, was charged with second-degree murder. It was not immediately known whether he had an attorney who could comment.

Wilcox said Martial has a criminal history and has been on parole.

“He does have in the past three emotionally disturbed encounters with us that we have documented,” he said.

Subway conditions and safety have become a worry for many New Yorkers during the pandemic. Although police statistics show major felonies in the subways have dropped over the past two years, so has ridership, making it difficult to compare.

And some recent attacks have gotten public attention and raised alarms. In September, three transit employees were assaulted in separate incidents on one day. Several riders were slashed and assaulted by a group of attackers on a train in lower Manhattan in May, and four separate stabbings — two of them fatal — happened within a few hours on a single subway line in February.

In recent months there have been several instances of people being stabbed, assaulted or shoved onto the tracks at stations in the Bronx, Brooklyn and at Times Square.

Saturday's attack against Go, who was of Asian descent, also raised concerns amid a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes in New York and around the country. Police officials said the killing, including whether it was a hate crime, was under investigation, but noted that the first woman Martial allegedly approached was not Asian. Martial is Black.

“This latest attack causing the death of an Asian American woman in the Times Square subway station is particularly horrifying for our community," Margaret Fung, executive director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said. She said the community was still mourning the Dec. 31 death of Yao Pan Ma, a Chinese immigrant who was attacked in April while collecting cans in East Harlem.

"These attacks have left Asian Americans across the city and across the country feeling vulnerable and they must stop,” Fung said in a statement.

Adams, who has been mayor for two weeks, has noted that a perception of danger could drive more people to eschew the subway, complicating the city's economic recovery as it tries to draw people back to offices, tourist attractions and more.

“We want to continue to highlight how imperative it is that people receive the right mental health services, particularly on our subway system,” the mayor said Saturday. “To lose a New Yorker in this fashion will only continue to elevate the fears of individuals not using our subway system.”

“Our recovery is dependent on the public safety in this city and in the subway system,” Adams said.

Under his predecessor, Bill de Blasio, the city repeatedly said it was deploying more police to subways after attacks last year and pressure from transit officials. The agency that runs the subway system, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, sped up work to install security cameras in all 472 subway stations citywide, finishing that project in September.

However, the city also has repeatedly faced complaints in recent years about heavy-handed policing in subways. Protests erupted, for example, after police were seen on bystander video handcuffing a woman they said was selling churros without a license at subway stations in 2019 and punching a Black teenager during a brawl on a subway platform that same year.

Six police officers were assigned to the station Saturday, authorities said.

Joining Adams last week to discuss the state of the subways, Gov. Kathy Hochul said she was planning to put together five teams of social workers and medical professionals to help the city guide people living on streets and subways to shelter, housing and services.

Both Hochul and Adams are Democrats.

NEW YORK —

New York City readied to embrace the new year — and bid good riddance to another pandemic-marred 12 months — as it prepared to revive its annual New Year's Eve celebration in Times Square.

It did so as an uneasy nation tries to muster optimism that the worst days of the pandemic are now behind it — even as public health officials cautioned Friday against unbridled celebrations amid surging COVID infections from the omicron variant.

The city said it would limit the number of people it lets into Times Square to witness a 6-ton ball, encrusted with nearly 2,700 Waterford crystals, descend above a crowd of about 15,000 in-person spectators — far fewer than the many tens of thousands of revelers who usually descend on the world-famous square to bask in the lights, hoopla and shower of confetti during the nation's marquee New Year's Eve event.

"We are very excited to welcome back visitors to Times Square this New Year's Eve," said Tom Harris, the president of the Times Square Alliance. "Our goal is to have a safe and responsible event for the world to see."

The annual ball drop takes place Friday, as the clock ticks into midnight and ushers in the new year, an occasion usually commemorated with Champagne, clinking pints, joyous embraces and hopes for better times ahead.

But 2022 begins just as the year prior began — with the pandemic clouding an already uncertain future.

Doubts swirled whether the city would have to cancel this year's bash, as the city posted record numbers of COVID cases in the days leading to it, even as some cities like Atlanta had decided to cancel their own celebrations.

Last year's ball drop was closed to the public because of the outbreak.

COVID-19 cases in the U.S. have soared to their highest levels on record at over 265,000 per day on average. New York City reported a record number of new, confirmed cases — more than 39,590 — on Tuesday, according to New York state figures.

But Mayor Bill de Blasio, who will relinquish oversight of the nation's most populous city at the stroke of midnight, said the festivities at Times Square would "show the world that New York City is fighting our way through this."

Officials said those attending the spectacle would have to wear masks and show proof of vaccination. Organizers had initially hoped that more than 50,000 revelers would be able to join in, but plans were dramatically scaled back because of widespread infections.

Rap artist and actor LL Cool J was supposed to be among the performers taking the stage in Times Square Friday night, but announced he would pull out of the event because he had tested positive for COVID-19.

New York City's incoming mayor, Eric Adams, is scheduled to take his oath in Times Square soon after the ball drop. He expressed hope Thursday that 2022 would be "a new beginning of our resiliency."

It was a sentiment shared by ordinary people.

College students and sisters Mary and Vanessa Anyakwo were guardedly optimistic, too, as they took in Times Square on an outing from their home in suburban Elmsford, New York.

"I feel a lot more hopeful than I was last year because I think we have a lot more facilities" to handle the pandemic, said Mary, 20.

Vanessa, 22, pointed to the crowds. "By this time last year," she said, "I didn't think it would be like this."

Paolo Brügger, a banker from Zurich, Switzerland, reflected on a world fed-up with having to endure wave after wave of the virus a year after 2021 dawned with hopes bottled up in vaccine vials.

His optimism was tempered by the world's new reality that the pandemic would linger into the new year.

"A lot of people are asking themselves now, 'Is this going to be like this every year — when we get into the cold season, we have a new variant, and we are back to square one?'" said Brügger, 55.

Still, he was "extremely optimistic" about 2022, partly because vaccines and new therapies against COVID-19 and partly, he said with a chuckle, "because it can't be worse than the last two years."