CDC strongly urges Americans to avoid travel for Thanksgiving

As the United States struggles with surging coronavirus cases and hospitalizations, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday urged Americans not to travel during the Thanksgiving holiday and to consider canceling plans to spend time with relatives outside their households.

The new guidance, which contrasted sharply with recent White House efforts to downplay the threat, states clearly that “the safest way to celebrate Thanksgiving is to celebrate at home with the people you live with” and that gathering with friends and even family members who do not live with you increases the chances of becoming infected with the virus or the flu or transmitting the virus.

Officials said they were strengthening their recommendations against travel because of a startling surge in infections in just the past week. Recent numbers of

hospitalizations — more than 79,000 reported on Wednesday — and new daily cases keep shattering U. S. records. As of Wednesday, the sevenday average of new cases across the country had surpassed more than 162,000, an increase of 77% from the average two weeks earlier.

“Amid this critical phase, the CDC is recommending against travel during the Thanksgiving period,” Dr. Henry Walke, COVID- 19 incident manager at the agency, said during a news briefing.

“We’re alarmed,” he added, citing an exponential increase in cases, hospitalizations and deaths.

“What we’re concerned about is not only the actual mode of travel — whether it’s an airplane or bus or car, but also the transportation hubs.”

“When people are in line” to get on a bus or plane, social distancing becomes far more difficult, and viral transmission becomes more likely, he said.

The agency’s overriding concern is that the holidays may accelerate the spread of the virus, CDC officials said.

Older family members are at great risk for complications and death should they contract the virus.

The agency’s guidance comes after similar warnings from a wide swath of health experts, governors and other officials.

Alex Azar, the secretary of health and human services, recently said he wantS Americans to listen to local and state guidance and “consult CDC’s guidelines about how gatherings can be made as safe as possible.”

And as he has repeatedly in recent weeks, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York on Thursday implored people to avoid travel and large gatherings during the holiday.

He prohibited private gatherings of more than 10 people, a rule that some officials have criticized as unenforceable.

“Please: Love is sometimes doing what’s hard,” Cuomo said. “This year, if you love someone, it is smarter and better to stay away. As hard as that is to say and hear.”

A different message has come from White House officials. Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, criticized health guidelines issued by governors as at odds with American notions of freedom in an interview on “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday.

“I think a lot of the guidelines you’re seeing are Orwellian,” she said, pointing to a rule in Oregon that gatherings should be limited to six people.

“The American people, we’re a freedom- loving people. We can make good decisions,” she said.

An adviser to President Donald Trump, Dr. Scott W. Atlas, who is a radiologist, not an expert on infectious diseases, argued this week against excluding older people from Thanksgiving gatherings, saying that isolation “is one of the unspoken tragedies” of the pandemic and that “for many people, this is their final Thanksgiving, believe it or not.”

“It’s not about just stopping cases of COVID. We have to talk about the damage of the policy itself,” he said on Fox News.

CDC officials made their pleas to avoid travel even as they acknowledged that the prolonged outbreak has taken a toll on families.

Walke warned that family get- togethers — especially those that bring different households together — could inadvertently lead to tragic outcomes.