U.S. airport traffic high despite public health pleas to avoid holiday travel

A traveler going through airport security.
(Image credit: David Ryder/Getty Images)

On Friday and Saturday, more than one million people made their way through U.S. airport security checkpoints, as public health officials urge Americans not to travel for the holidays due to the surge in coronavirus cases.

U.S. airports have screened more than one million people a day only four times since mid-March, with three of those times around Thanksgiving. Now, the seven-day rolling average of new coronavirus cases is more than 215,000 a day, up from about 176,000 on the day before Thanksgiving. Public health experts — who asked people to stay home and not gather indoors with other households during the holiday — believe Thanksgiving travel is one reason why the number has increased.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.