Smaller crowds greet Rose Parade’s return to Pasadena amid omicron surge
LOS ANGELES — The Rose Parade is back.
After the coronavirus forced its first cancellation since World War II last year, the whimsical, flower-filled procession returned to Pasadena on Saturday.
The parade began at 8 a.m. Pacific, with actor and television host LeVar Burton serving as grand marshal. The theme is “Dream. Achieve. Believe.”
While the return of the Rose Parade is seen by many as a cheerful respite from two painful pandemic years, it is clouded by a dramatic surge in COVID-19 cases fueled by the highly contagious omicron variant.
As spectators from across the country lined Colorado Boulevard, nearly 1 in 4 people in Los Angeles County who are being tested are positive for the coronavirus, and daily totals of new, confirmed infections are doubling every two days.
The pre-parade crowd was dramatically smaller than in years
