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SIOUX FALLS, SD (AP) – Americans couldn’t resist the urge to come together on Thanksgiving, driving just under a year ago and largely ignoring calls from public health experts, who have begged to forgo vacation travel to help contain the coronavirus pandemic, road and airport data shows.
The country’s reluctance to cut back on travel offered a warning ahead of Christmas and New Years as virus deaths and hospitalizations soar to new highs a week after Thanksgiving. Deaths in the United States from the outbreak eclipsed 3,100 on Thursday, shattering the one-day record set last spring.
Vehicle travel in early November was up to 20% lower than a year earlier, but increased around the holidays and peaked on Thanksgiving Day at only about 5% less than the pandemic-free period in 2019, according to StreetLight Data, which provided analysis to The Associated Press.
“People were less willing to change their behavior than on any other day in the pandemic,” said Laura Schewel, founder of StreetLight Data.
Airports also experienced some of their busiest days in the pandemic, although air travel was much lower than last year. The Transportation Security Administration screened more than one million passengers on four different days during the Thanksgiving travel period. Since the pandemic destroyed travel in March, there has only been one other day that the number of travelers has exceeded one million: October 18.
“If only a small percentage of these travelers were infected asymptomatically, it can translate into hundreds of thousands of more infections passing from one community to another,” Center manager Dr. Cindy Friedman said this week. for Disease Control and Prevention. Report.
Large swathes of the country saw a sudden influx of people arriving from college campuses in the days leading up to the holidays, an anonymous cell phone data visualization shows from a company called Tectonix.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has urged people to stay home for the holidays, but officials acknowledged that many people would disregard the advice. and advised them to get tested before and after the trips. Friedman said this year’s vacation presented “tough choices” for many families.
Among the travelers were elected officials who preached against travel. Mayors of Denver and Austin, Texas, faced violent backlash for traveling after telling other people to stay home.
Others had no regrets. Trananda Graves, who runs a travel planning company in Keller, Texas, took a Thanksgiving road trip with her family to Nashville, Tennessee. It was a chance for her daughter to connect with parents as they shared recipes, and Graves said everyone’s mood had turned up.
“It was just a break to get away from the house,” Graves said. “We work at home, we go to school at home.”
She decided to drive to meet the extended family after finding the flights to be crowded and said her family followed the advice to avoid spreading infections.
But infections, even at small Thanksgiving gatherings, have started to spread across the country, adding another burden to health services that are already overwhelmed.
“This hike here really comes at a time when everyone is exhausted,” said Don Lehman, a spokesperson for the Warren County Department of Public Health in upstate New York.
The county concluded that Thanksgiving gatherings or trips likely caused 40% of the 22 cases reported in the past two days. This means that contact tracers have to determine where people are coming from or going and contact the health officials in those places. Lehman said this adds “a lot of groundwork” to the contact tracing process.
Graves said she expects an increase in travel planning activity around the holidays. Several groups have already made inquiries to travel to Las Vegas to celebrate the end of a difficult year.
What about his personal vacation plans? After the Thanksgiving trip, she said, “We are now planning to visit my mom for Christmas.”
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