US air traffic on Thanksgiving eve was the highest it's been since the beginning of the pandemic
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Bill Bostock
Nov 27, 2020, 22:04 IST
Holiday travelers pass through Los Angeles International Airport on November 25, 2020.David McNew/Getty Images
US air traffic on Thanksgiving eve was the highest of any day since March, according to Transportation Security Administration records.
More than 1,070,900 people passed TSA checkpoints on Wednesday, the agency found. The number was down just 40% from 2019's numbers.
Health authorities had urged Americans not to travel for the holiday, but an Insider survey found that 37% of Americans said they planned to go about Thanksgiving as normal.
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US air traffic on Thanksgiving eve was the highest of any day since March, according to Transportation Security Administration records.
The last time that many people traveled by air was March 16, when 1,257,823 people passed TSA checkpoints. The World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic on March 11.
Some 2,624,250 people traveled through TSA checkpoints on the day before Thanksgiving last year, meaning this year's figures were a 40% decrease.
The relatively high level of US air travel came even though multiple health authorities, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, urged Americans to avoid traveling even short distances for Thanksgiving.
Thirty-one percent of respondents said they didn't factor CDC advice into their plans, and 57% said they were planning to mix households at the dinner table.
The agency also acknowledged that some people might not follow its advice, adding that those who were spending Thanksgiving with people they didn't live with should wear masks and wash their hands frequently.
"You are at a crowded airport, you are lining up, not everybody is wearing masks. That puts yourself at risk … that's what's going to get us into even more trouble," he said.
That same day, the CDC predicted that the US would most likely pass 300,000 deaths by December 19.
As of Friday morning, more than 12.8 million people in the US had tested positive for COVID-19 and more than 260,000 people had died, according to a tracker from Johns Hopkins University.
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