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Thousands of Americans ignore warnings not to travel on Thanksgiving. Photo / Flightradar24
Even though Covid-19 is still rampant across the country, many Americans are refusing to give up on their vacation plans to help slow the spread.
With Thanksgiving just days away, fears are mounting that the United States, which is already grappling with a rapid rise in cases, could see a large increase in coronavirus infections unless people cancel their plans for holidays.
The US government’s health protection agency has asked Americans for the first time not to travel on Thanksgiving, which is Thursday, and paused shortly before issuing a total travel ban. .
“We are alarmed by the exponential increase in cases, hospitalizations and deaths,” said Henry Walke, an official with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
It is tradition for families to come together on this holiday and share a meal, with many members of the extended family traveling from across the country to be together.
This year, the CDC has urged people to celebrate the holiday at home with the people they live with, warning that meeting people outside of their homes increases the chances of spreading COVID-19.
But it seems these pleas may have fallen on deaf ears, with images of crowded airports already popping up online over the weekend, raising concerns that the country could see an explosion of new cases in December.
The Transportation Security Administration said it was the “busiest weekend” American airports have seen since the start of the pandemic, with more than three million passengers passing through terminals across the country.
The global flight-tracking service, Flightradar24, took a snapshot of flights that took place in North America on Tuesday, two days before Thanksgiving.
As of 12 p.m. Tuesday there were 6,972 active flights in the sky over North America, this is just slightly fewer than the 7,630 flights that were taken at the same time and date in 2019.
Surprisingly, there were more active North American flights this year than at the same time in 2018.
The tracking service also provided the total of tracked flights worldwide that appeared in each snapshot for the past three years.
The 2018 flight tracking image consisted of 46 percent of flights worldwide, and the 2019 image was slightly more than 49 percent.
With the number of flights declining globally due to the pandemic, the active flights captured in this year’s image accounted for a whopping 65 percent of the flights taken at that point worldwide.
The United States now has more than 12.5 million confirmed coronavirus cases and more than 259,000 deaths.
The country now records more than 100,000 new infections every day and the daily death count has ranged from 1,000 to 2,000 in recent days.
With so many people appearing to ignore COVID safety advice, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, has tried to lead by example, announcing that his three adult daughters would not visit him this year for the Day. Thanksgiving.
He said he would celebrate the party with just his wife, contenting himself with “a glass of wine” while interacting with his children on Zoom.
Even President-elect Joe Biden has urged citizens to take precautions this year, calling for indoor celebrations to be limited to 10 people, and for social distancing and the wearing of masks to also be encouraged.
“I strongly urge for the sake, not only for your sake, but for the sake of your children, your mother, your father, your sisters, your brothers, whoever you meet with for Thanksgiving, think about this. There should be no group of more than 10 people in a room, at the same time, inside the houses. That’s what they are telling me, “he said.
“I just want to make sure we can be together next Thanksgiving, next Christmas. It’s an international crisis. We are at war with the virus.”
Most state governors have urged citizens not to visit their extended families this year and risk infecting their loved ones.
Other experts have added their voices to the growing calls for Americans to take the pandemic seriously.
“It’s not too late to change your plans,” Meghan McGinty, a disaster prevention expert at Johns Hopkins University, said Monday.
“Thanksgiving will be a pivotal moment in controlling the pandemic. If we don’t limit our celebration to just our homes, we will certainly see an increase in cases and hospitalizations after Thanksgiving.”
Since March, when COVID-19 cases began to rise in the US, every holiday that has passed has sparked outbreaks across the country.
Health officials previously noted that there were spikes in infections shortly after July 4, Labor Day in September, and Halloween in October.
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