Covid News: Thanksgiving Air Travel May Rise to Near 2019 Level
Airline travel this Thanksgiving season is expected to approach prepandemic levels, Transportation Security Administration officials said Wednesday. The agency is preparing to handle about 20 million air passengers.
“We are staffed and prepared for the holiday travelers,” David Pekoske, the T.S.A. administrator, said in a statement.
The large volume of travelers expected comes as inoculation rates across the country have risen, allowing many families to gather safely for the first time since 2019, when T.S.A. screened 26 million people. The uptick also signals a willingness by people across the country to resume customary holiday travel.
“I recommend that travelers pay attention to the guidance that the T.S.A. officers are providing at the checkpoint,” Mr. Pekoske said. “They may be directing you to a shorter line or guiding you around someone who is moving slowly. And they may be giving you some advice that will lessen the likelihood that you’ll need a pat-down.”
The busiest days during the Thanksgiving travel period are usually the Tuesday and Wednesday before Thanksgiving and the Sunday afterward, the T.S.A. statement said. While the travel volume this year is not expected to reach 2019 levels, the agency said it could be higher in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving.
The increase comes as airlines deal with an uptick in cases of unruly passengers. The Federal Aviation Administration has issued fines and the president of the Association of Flight Attendants union, Sara Nelson, has blamed the rising tensions in the skies to the politically charged atmosphere over health protocols.
In an interview with CBS Mornings, Mr. Pekoske said that the number of such reports are higher than he can ever recall.
“We’re working very closely with the carriers, the flight attendants, the flight deck crews, the air force and the F.A.A., to do everything that we can to message how dangerous this behavior is,” he said.
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White House: About 10% of Younger Children Have Received First Shot
White House officials estimated that nearly 10 percent of the nation’s 5- to 11-year olds had received their first coronavirus vaccine dose since the approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech shot for that age group.
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Our effective rollout is helping parents and families across the country experience the giant sigh of relief of knowing their kids are on the path to having protection from the virus. We estimate by the end of the day today, 2.6 million kids ages 5 to 11 will have gotten their first shot — 2.6 million, that’s about 10 percent of kids. So just 10 days into our program being at full strength, we’re at 10 percent of kids. For perspective, it took about 50 days for us to reach 10 percent of adults with one shot. And when the polio vaccine was first rolled out for kids in the 1950s, it took about three months to cross two and a half million shots in arms. And in fact, the pace of vaccinations for kids has been accelerating. In the last week, 1.7 million…
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