25 November,2020 08:02 AM IST | New York | Agencies
Travelers at the Miami International Airport on Sunday. New cases in the US have rocketed to all-time highs, averaging over 1,70,000 per day, and deaths have soared to over 1,500 a day. Pic/AP
About 1 million Americans a day packed airports and planes over the weekend even as coronavirus deaths surged across the US and public health experts begged people to stay home and avoid big Thanksgiving gatherings.
And the crowds are only expected to grow. Next Sunday is likely to be the busiest day of the holiday period. The number of people flying for Thanksgiving is down by over half from last year. But, the 3 million who went through US airport checkpoints from Friday to Sunday marked the biggest crowds since mid-March, when the COVID-19 crisis took hold in the US.
Many travellers are unwilling to miss out on seeing family and are convinced they can do it safely. Also, many colleges have ended their in-person classes, so students are returning home.
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Last week, the CDC urged Americans not to travel or spend the holiday with people outside their household. "There is so much community transmission all over the US that the chances of you encountering somebody that has COVID-19 is actually very, very high, whether it's on an airplane, at the airport or at a rest area," said Dr Syra Madad, an epidemiologist for New York City hospitals. The nation's top infectious diseases expert Dr Anthony Fauci told CBS that people at airports "are going to get us into even more trouble than we're in right now."
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