New York City’s leaders are pushing ahead with plans for the annual New Year’s Eve party in Times Square despite record numbers of new Covid infections driven by the Omicron variant.

Outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is set to step down at midnight on Saturday, told NBC’s Today show that pressing ahead with the public celebration would show “that we’re moving forward, and we want to show the world that New York City is fighting our way through this.

“It’s really important to not give up in the face of this,” he added.

De Blasio has already scaled back celebrations from the “full-strength” celebration he originally approved. Crowds will be limited to 15,000, down from 60,000 pre-pandemic, and everyone who enters must wear a mask.

But the decision to press ahead comes in contrast to public health messaging from Washington and decisions in other large, populous cities, including San Francisco and Atlanta, to cancel their events.

On Wednesday, White House health advisor Dr Anthony Fauci said he approved of small, at-home New Year’s Eve gatherings among vaccinated and boosted individuals but urged Americans to cancel plans to attend larger gatherings.

“If your plans are to go to a 40- to 50-person New Year’s Eve party with all the bells and whistles and everybody hugging and kissing and wishing each other a happy new year, I would strongly recommend that this year we do not do that,” Fauci said at a Covid-19 briefing.

De Blasio said Thursday: “Our health-care leadership believes this is the right way to do it.” He said his administration had not held discussions about canceling or reducing the “ball drop” event further.

“We’ve got to send a message to the world. New York City is open,” he said, adding that the festivities at Times Square would “show the world that New York City is fighting our way through this”.

Incoming mayor Eric Adams cancelled his inauguration party, but is still scheduled to take his oath in Times Square soon after the ball drop. He expressed hope on Thursday that 2022 would be “a new beginning of our resiliency”.

New York governor Kathy Hochul released figures on Thursday showing that the city, state and country are all breaking records for newly confirmed Covid-19 infections. New York state has set a new high in the average number of daily reported cases for the last 11 days.

Across the state, more than 7,700 are currently hospitalized with the virus and the number is increasing. The city reported a record number of new, confirmed cases – more than 39,590 – on Tuesday, according to New York state figures.

“As we approach the New Year it is vitally important that we don’t let our guard down in our fight against the pandemic,” Hochul said. “We have the tools and we know what works – mask up, get vaccinated, get boosted, and exercise caution in large gatherings, especially this weekend.”

The decision to press on with the Times Square party has received criticism from other elected officials. Mark Levine, who takes over as Manhattan borough president tonight, called for the event to be cancelled.

“We are not doing enough to slow this,” he said on Twitter. “Now is the time to act. Time is of the essence.”

That warning comes as one fifth of the city’s police force is out due to virus infections, according to NYPD commissioner Dermot Shea.

Kelly Doran, an emergency physician with NYU Langone, tweeted: “Pretty unreal to me that NYC is still holding its big New Year’s Eve bash tomorrow when Covid cases are higher than ever, hospitals are having to call in visiting help & cancel elective surgeries, and FDNY is pleading with the public not to call 911.”

As many as 20% of the city’s restaurants and bars are temporarily shuttered and owners report a sharp drop in trade. On Thursday, some of the thousands of tourists visiting the city for New Year said they were not unduly inconvenienced by the sharp rise in Covid infections.

“We prefer to go to places where there are less people. On New Year’s eve we will stay in our hotel,” said Antonio Palmeri, visiting from Turin with friends. “But it is our dream to be in New York so we are happy to be here.”

Tourists visiting the bronze charging bull on lower Wall Street on Friday said while they were anxious about the number of cases, they wanted to continue enjoying their visits.

“The reality is that everyone is fatigued by the pandemic, and at this point everyone knows they should be doing what they can to stay safe, but at this point we’re in a fuck it phase,” said Ben Martin, visiting from Boston.

“If the government is telling us to be less careful by cutting quarantine times in half, and we should go back to work, we’re all in the space of like whatever…We don’t have the energy to keep stressing as much.”