On Christmas Eve, most travelers have passed through airports since March.
A total of more than 1.19 million travelers went through checkpoints at airports across the country on Wednesday, according to the Transport and Security Administration. This is the largest number of travelers since March, exceeding 1.17 million travelers who passed through airports the weekend after Thanksgiving, according to TSA data.
Millions of Americans traveled through airports during the Thanksgiving holiday week, despite the Center for Disease Control and Prevention urging the public not to.
Along with the consequences of pandemic fatigue and more people gathering indoors due to cold weather, the amount of travel and meetings during Thanksgiving Day proved deadly: as Morgan McFall-Johnsen of Business Insider reported earlier this month , more than 47,000 people have died of coronavirus since Thanksgiving.
Before the Christmas holiday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease specialist, told The Washington Post that he advises the public to “stay home as long as possible, keep their interactions as far as possible for members from the same family “and noted that vacations” cannot be business as usual “this time.
Frontline nurses told Allana Akhtar of Business Insider that they expect an increase in cases after the winter break, similar to what they witnessed after Thanksgiving.
“We just hope the numbers get worse, unfortunately,” said Sarah Curran, an ICU nurse in Michigan.
This alarming number of trips takes place amid dark milestones related to the coronavirus. On Saturday, the US surpassed 18.7 million cases of coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins University. The US saw a 7.6% increase in the number of cases last week, according to the COVID Tracking project, and due to the overwhelming number of cases, some areas like California regions are setting up tents outside to make way to patients.