More than one million people were screened by the TSA yesterday, which is the highest number of travelers since mid-March, as Americans start heading home ahead of Thanksgiving despite pleas from health officials for people to stay home.
The TSA said it screened 1.047 million passengers across the country on Sunday.
The number of air travelers is still about 60 percent lower than the same date last year but Sunday was the second time in three days that passengers screened topped one million.
It is the highest number since March 16 when 1.3 million passengers were screened at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
‘It was the highest since the steep decline due to the pandemic and the second time in three days that checkpoint volume surpassed 1 million,’ TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said.
The TSA said it screened 1.047 million passengers across the country on Sunday, which is the highest number since March 16 when 1.3 million passengers were screened at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Pictured is Miami International Airport on Sunday
The CDC issued guidance late last week strongly recommending Americans not to travel during the Thanksgiving holiday to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 as cases, hospitalizations and death spike across the country.
Health officials have warned that the burgeoning wave of infections could soon overwhelm the healthcare system if people do not follow public health guidance, particularly around not traveling and mingling with other households for Thanksgiving.
More than 256,000 Americans have now died of COVID-19 and there have been over 12.2 million confirmed cases.
Skyrocketing cases and hospitalizations have prompted state officials to issue new restrictions as they encouraged their residents to heed medical advice over the holidays.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy on Monday pleaded with people to ‘do the right thing’.
‘Keep Thanksgiving small, don’t travel. There’s a huge amount of personal responsibility here, everybody has to do the right thing,’ Murphy told ABC’s Good Morning America.
‘We’ve got a vortex here; cold weather, people letting their hair down with fatigue and holiday after holiday.
‘We’re pleading with people – please God, do the right thing.’
The CDC issued guidance late last week strongly recommending Americans not to travel during the Thanksgiving holiday to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Pictured is Fort Lauderdale airport on Sunday
Huge crowds were spotted at Chicago’s O’Hare airport on Friday – just one day after the CDC issued guidance urging Americans not to travel
Passengers are seen at the San Francisco International Airport on Friday
It comes as a new poll showed that one in three parents believe family holiday gatherings is worth the risk amid the pandemic.
‘Our report suggests that while many children have spent less time with relatives during the pandemic, some parents may have a hard time foregoing holiday gatherings in order to reduce COVID-19 risks,’ Sarah Clark, co-director of the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health at Michigan Medicine, said.
Dr Anthony Fauci urged Americans to look at the bigger picture before they travel or make plans for the holidays.
‘I think the people in this country need to realistically do a risk-benefit assessment,’ the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases told NBC anchor Chuck Todd on Meet the Press.
‘Every family is different. Everyone has a different level of risk that they want to tolerate.
‘But when you think of the holiday season and the congregating indoors at what are innocent, lovely functions, like meals with family and friends, you have got to at least think in terms of evaluating, do you have people in your family that are elderly, that might have underlying conditions, like someone on chemotherapy, or other things that weaken their immune system?’
Fauci said that families should also consider the areas people would be traveling from.
‘Do you really want to get a crowd of 10, 15, 20 people, many of whom are coming in from places where they have gone from crowded airports, to planes, getting into the house?’ he said.
While recognizing that some will host guests this holiday season, Fauci said they should ‘at least give you and your family the benefit of having considered what is the risk-benefit of doing that’.
Still, video footage on Twitter showed more than a hundred people, wearing masks, crowding departure gates at Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix, Arizona, on Friday.
Lines for TSA checkpoints and kiosks at Chicago O’Hare airport were also long.
The CDC’s Thanksgiving warning is some of the firmest guidance yet from the federal government on curtailing traditional gatherings to fight the outbreak.
Dr Erin Sauber-Schatz, of the CDC, cited the more than 1 million new cases in the US over a one-week period as the reason for the new guidance.
‘The safest way to celebrate Thanksgiving this year is at home with the people in your household,’ she said on Thursday.
The CDC is warning that large indoor household gatherings this holiday season could make the situation even worse.
The CDC has advised against gathering with anyone who has not lived in the same household for at least 14 days, which is the incubation period for COVID-19.
If families do decide to include returning college students, military members or others for turkey and stuffing, the CDC is recommending that the hosts take added precautions: Gatherings should be outdoors if possible, with people keeping 6 feet apart and wearing masks and just one person serving the food.