Apparently, a deadly virus raging across the country cannot dampen the Yuletide spirit for Americans, who are starting their annual holiday travel rush on U.S. airports.
Despite a re-emphasis from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that it’s best to stay at home this December (a continuance of its advice for Thanksgiving), the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screened more than two million travelers on December 18 and 19 combined, as end-of-year work and school vacation periods began.
On Friday, TSA checkpoints across all nationwide airports screened 1,066,747 travelers and 1,073,563 people on Saturday. Spokesperson Lisa Farbstein wrote that this is the first instance since March 2020’s start of the pandemic that passenger screenings have exceeded one million on two consecutive days.
These are also only the sixth and seventh days during the entire course of the pandemic that passenger counts have surpassed one million. According to USA Today, the least-busy single day for U.S. air travel occurred on April 14, when the TSA processed just 87,534 passengers.
This weekend’s numbers are still significantly lower than last year’s—about 40 percent of those recorded on the same days in 2019—but are perhaps higher than what might be expected as the nation continues setting record daily highs for new COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths.
The CDC had also warned Americans against traveling for Thanksgiving this year, though 9.4 million passengers ultimately chose to fly over the Thanksgiving travel period. During the travel rush—which lasted from the Friday before Thanksgiving to the Sunday following the holiday—passenger counts topped one million on four different days, reaching a pandemic-era record of 1,176,091 on November 29.
