Dr. Anthony Fauci said in an interview with ABC’s “This Week” Sunday that the United States may be seeing a surge on top of the current COVID-19 surge because of Thanksgiving.
- Fauci said: “We may see a surge upon a surge. We don’t want to frighten people, but that’s just the reality. We said that these things would happen as we got into the cold weather and as we began traveling, and they’ve happened.”
Context:
This has obviously been the warning from experts for weeks now. Experts warned against traveling for the holiday season. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said people should avoid traveling for Thanksgiving, and keeping Turkey Day dinner limited to those in your household, as I wrote about for the Deseret News.
In unsurprising news, Americans didn’t really follow the advice. The U.S. set an air travel record during the pandemic era as 1,070,967 passed through security checkpoints on the day before Thanksgiving. That’s 40% less than Thanksgiving 2019, according to CNN.
What’s next
More people will travel during the holidays, Fauci said. This could lead to another round of COVID-19 cases, he said.
- “It’s going to happen again,” Fauci said. “We’re getting into colder weather and an even larger holiday season.”
Fauci said something similar in an interview with NBC’s “Meet The Press” over the weekend, warning that darker days are ahead, according to The New York Times.
- “We might see a surge superimposed upon that surge that we’re already in.”