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WASHINGTON: Americans ignored pleas by state and local officials to stay home over the Thanksgiving holiday in the face of the escalating coronavirus pandemic, prompting new warnings from health officials with vaccines launching weeks away. distance.
US President-elect Joe Biden joined calls for safety, urging people to forgo large family gatherings, wear protective masks and maintain social distancing.
“I know we can and will defeat this virus,” Biden said in a speech delivered in a nearly empty Wilmington, Delaware theater to a handful of masked employees and reporters sitting in socially distanced circles on the ground. Biden didn’t wear a mask.
“Life will return to normal. I promise you. This will happen. This will not last forever,” said Biden, a 78-year-old Democrat.
Deaths from COVID-19 topped 2,000 in a single day for the first time since May on Tuesday, and hospitalizations hit a record 88,000 on Wednesday, as the country recorded 2.3 million new infections in the past two weeks.
Spiral infections generally result in an increase in the number of deaths weeks later. Coronavirus deaths reached 2,157 on Tuesday, one person every 40 seconds, with another 170,000 infected, as millions of Americans ignored official warnings and traveled for Thanksgiving.
Nearly 1 million passengers a day have been screened at airport security checkpoints over the past week, with Sunday’s total of 1,047 million being the highest number since the early days of the pandemic in mid-March.
‘WE WANT TO SEE THE FAMILY’
Daliza Rodríguez, a 33-year-old early childhood educator, was traveling to Texas from New York’s LaGuardia Airport on Wednesday.
“We know we are taking a risk, but we want to see family, and it has been a long time,” he said.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, urged people to keep Thanksgiving gatherings as small as possible and emphasized the need to “hold on a little longer.”
“If we do those things, we’ll get over it. So that’s my last plea before the holidays,” Fauci told ABC News “Good Morning America” on Wednesday.
Families with college students have been forced to assess the risk of reuniting for Thanksgiving.
Francesca Wimer, a student at Northwestern University in Illinois, flew home to Washington wearing an N95 mask and face shield and checked into a hotel for 14 days, self-quarantining to protect her parents and grandparents.
“She was going back to a vulnerable group of people. We didn’t trust that one test was enough,” said her mother, Cynthia Wimer.
Luke Burke, who was a student at Syracuse University in upstate New York, planned to spend Thanksgiving with his family in New Jersey until his roommate tested positive last week.
“I’m sorry I can’t be there with my parents, but it’s the right thing to do,” Burke said.
LINES IN NEW YORK CITY
Across New York City, lines at COVID-19 testing sites surrounded the block Wednesday, a video showed on Twitter. Warm New Yorkers lined up outside clinics in Astoria, Queens and Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, beginning at 8 a.m.
MG Robinson, a hired analyst with the New York City Comptroller’s Office, waited in line for seven hours outside a CityMD clinic in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood on Wednesday.
“I woke up at 6 (a.m.) and got here at 6.30 … I couldn’t even see the front of the line,” said Robinson, 30, who plans to meet with a small group of family members on Thanksgiving Day. Thank you. .
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who came under fire after telling a local television station that he had invited his 89-year-old mother and two daughters to Albany for Thanksgiving, since he changed course.
“This is not a normal Thanksgiving Day, and to act like it’s a normal Thanksgiving Day is to deny the reality of all the nation’s health experts,” Cuomo told reporters Wednesday, urging New Yorkers to stay home.
The first COVID-19 vaccines could take weeks at the US Food and Drug Administration due to the Dec.10 rule on whether to approve Pfizer Inc.’s vaccine for emergency use.
A second vaccine, made by Moderna Inc, could also be ready for U.S. authorization and distribution in a few weeks, said U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar.
The Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed program plans to release 6.4 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine nationwide as soon as one is approved.
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