NEW YORK—New York City’s Times Square was barricaded on Thursday, with only a handful of invited guests, including health care workers and others from the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, allowed in to watch the New Year’s Eve ball drop in person. Everyone else should stay home and watch the pared-down festivities on television, Mayor Bill de Blasio said, with scores of events around the United States similarly curtailed or moved online. Tens of thousands of people usually fill the blocks around Times Square, standing for hours in the cold at the focal point of U.S. New Year’s Eve celebrations, waiting for a crystal ball to slowly descend in the year’s final seconds. Police will allow in only a few dozen this year, with masks and no sign of fever required for entry, among them the Bronx-born singer Jennifer Lopez and Gloria Gaynor, who is due to sing her …