Millions travel, despite CDC’s dire warnings

Millions of Americans are traveling for Christmas and New Year’s, despite pleas from public health experts to stay home and avoid fueling the pandemic.

An average of more than 1 million people per day have rolled through the nation’s airports the past five days, around the same number that crowded airports for the Thanksgiving holiday.

“Stay home to best protect yourself and others from #COVID19 this holiday season,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tweeted Wednesday. “Host a virtual holiday meal with friends and family, gather for a virtual gift exchange, decorate your home, or make festive crafts.”

Jennifer Brownlee, 34, a fisherman from Bayou La Batre, Alabama, was flying from the Tampa airport to Oregon to see her mother, who just lost a leg. “My mom’s worth it. She needs my help,” she said. “I know that God’s got me. He’s not going to let me get sick.”

Overall, AAA projected that about 85 million people would travel between Wednesday and Jan. 3, most of them by car.

Latest numbers

The U.S. has more than 18.2 million confirmed coronavirus cases and 322,500 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The global totals are more than 78.1 million cases and 1.71 million deaths.

An additional 3,401 U.S. deaths were recorded Wednesday, the second highest total on record, according to Johns Hopkins University. It’s the fifth time the death toll has surpassed 3,000 in one day, and all five times were this month. The U.S. for the first time reported more than 19,000 dead of COVID-19 in seven-day period.

Other top headlines

h The swath of Britain under at tight lockdown was broadened Wednesday as concerns over a coronavirus mutation mounted. Health officials warned that only strict social distancing could protect the population as infections and deaths rolled higher.

h Canada authorized Moderna’s vaccine and said shipments should enter the country within 48 hours. Health officials approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine Dec. 9. The country should get 40 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine in 2021, enough to vaccinate 20 million people, or about two-thirds of the Canadian adult population

h Germany, with about one-quarter the population of the U.S., reported a one-day record of 962 deaths despite recent restrictions that shut most stores, tightened the rules on social contacts and urged people not to visit relatives over Christmas.