AMERICANS URGED TO FORGO GATHERINGS THIS THANKSGIVING
`YOU CAN'T ASSUME YOU DON'T HAVE THE VIRUS'
Health experts continue to urge Americans not to travel and gather for Thanksgiving as a fall wave of the virus worsens across the country, with case counts nearing 200,000 a day.
In the past week, the new daily reported case counts in the United States spiked nearly 14 per cent, according to data tracked by The Washington Post.
“If you look at the map of spread across the country, you can see the risk, it's very visible. And moving through airports or travel hubs, I think that will increase people's risk,” Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said on Fox News Sunday. “Even if they're driving from point to point, unfortunately, we don't know if we're infected when we walk into a gathering.”
He referred to recent data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that said most infections are spread by people with no symptoms. The CDC, during its first news briefing in months on Thursday, recommended against travelling and gathering for the American Thanksgiving and said people should instead celebrate in their own households.
“The message for everyone is: You can't assume you don't have the virus and you can't assume the people whose homes you're about to enter don't have the virus at this point in our pandemic,” Inglesby said.
For those who plan to travel and gather with others for the Nov. 26 holiday, he recommended keeping gatherings small, spending as much time outdoors as possible if weather permits, keeping mealtimes short, wearing masks indoors and removing masks only while eating.
Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, said individuals should do a “risk-benefit assessment” and evaluate whether they have family and friends who may be particularly vulnerable to the virus.
“When you think of the holiday season and the congregating indoors at what are innocent, lovely functions, like meals with family and friends, you have got to at least think in terms of evaluating — do you have people in your family that are elderly, that might have underlying conditions, like someone on chemotherapy, or other things that weaken their immune system?” Fauci said during an interview that aired Sunday on NBC News's Meet the Press.
Fauci said that he understands many Americans are experiencing “COVID fatigue” after more than eight months of pandemic restrictions but that travelling over the holidays and ignoring public health guidelines are “going to get us into even more trouble than we're in right now.”
“That's the wrong decision, because vaccines are coming, and they're going to be available relatively soon,” he said.
More than one million people went through Transportation Security Administration checkpoints in airports across the country on Friday, according to data released daily by the agency, and more than 980,000 travellers were screened Saturday. The number of travellers screened Friday was the second-highest single-day rush since March 16.
Fauci referred to “some very, very promising information regarding at least two vaccine candidates that have a very high degree of efficacy” and suggested that while cases continue to explode, people should heed public health measures until the vaccines become available.
“Help is on the way,” he said on Meet the Press.
“Traditionally and historically, highly efficacious and effective vaccines have crushed epidemics l i ke smallpox and polio and measles,” Fauci added. “We can do that with the vaccines that are going to be coming online. So we should make them be ... an incentive to have us double down even more with public health measures until we get the full component of the help that's on its way.”
VACCINES ARE COMING, AND THEY'RE GOING TO BE AVAILABLE RELATIVELY SOON.