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If Americans don’t limit their holiday gatherings this year, the post-Christmas coronavirus surge could have devastating effects on a country that has already surpassed 18 million COVID-19 cases and experienced the deadliest year in the world. US history largely due to the pandemic.
“The transmission of the virus that took place during the Thanksgiving period brought many health care systems across the country to the brink of failure and we are not yet finished seeing that impact,” said Dr John Brownstein, director of innovation at Boston Children’s Hospital. ABC News Wednesday.
“The layering of travel and holiday gatherings in December means we’ll have a third jump in this wave or surge wave,” Brownstein continued. “Unfortunately, this increase is likely to have catastrophic effects on hospital capacity and the acceleration of dire death milestones through February.”
Brownstein’s warnings come as the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screened more than 2 million passengers at U.S. airports on Saturday and Sunday, a consecutive record for the first time since March, despite the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) urge Americans. to stay home in the fight against COVID-19.
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Cases and hospitalizations are already increasing across the country, with California in particular feeling the direct effects of what experts said on Tuesday likely to be a continuing impact of Thanksgiving gatherings.
Many hospitals across the state are at or close to full capacity, and Gov. Gavin Newsom has warned that COVID-19 hospitalizations in California could reach 100,000 by January.
At a joint press conference, officials from some of the state’s largest hospital systems, including Kaiser Permanente, Sutter Health and Dignity Health, as well as officials from the California Health and Human Services Agency, and others , pleaded with Californians to continue taking precautions against COVID-19, saying not to “share your air with others.”
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“As we’ve heard, California is in crisis mode – we’re breaking records that we don’t want to break,” such as the number of COVID-19 hospital patients in the state and the number of patients requiring ventilators or intensive care, said Dr. Thomas McGinn, executive vice president of the physicians business at Dignity Health, at the conference.
McGinn said medical workers have a “simple prescription” for Californians: “Don’t share the air.”
“It’s been nine months,” he added. “Now is the time to be disciplined, now is the time to stick to it.”
Janine Puhak of Fox News contributed to this report.
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