Health Officials Worry that Increased Travel Could Launch a Long-Lasting COVID Surge

By Yehudit Garmaise

   Despite the urgings of many public health officials and elected officials, who urged Americans to celebrate Thanksgiving only with members of their households, last Sunday, airports hosted the most travelers since March 16.

   On Sunday, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) reported screening 1.05 million people, and yesterday the TSA said that it screened more than 900,000 people.

   This morning on a conference call, Gov. Andrew Cuomo worried that the increased travel and socializing today would lead to a spike in COVID-positivity.

   Yesterday, Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told CNN's Jim Acosta that Americans still do not seem to realize the how dangerous the virus is and how much more dangerous it will become.

    "We have to understand we're in a very dangerous place. People have to stop swapping air," said Osterholm, who worried that the COVID spike that could start today could G-d forbid last through to the end of the year. "It's just that simple."  

  Just yesterday, for instance, the United States reported 2,046 COVID-related deaths: the country’s highest since early May, Johns Hopkins University data showed.

   The COVID Tracking Project added that this week, the country also, unfortunately, hit a new daily hospitalization record, with 89,954 COVID-19 patients currently in hospitals. 

   "We are going to see our hospitals literally on the verge of collapse," Osterholm said.

   Gov. Cuomo also worried this morning that New York state might soon need to bring in field hospitals to treat an overflow of COVID patients from established hospitals. 

   Another innovative idea to solve a potential shortage of hospital beds is a plan of the federal government to deliver acute hospital care at home.

   As part of the plan of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, former prohibitions on surgeries done outside of hospitals, which are notoriously hotbeds for the transmission of the virus.

    Alternative centers for healthcare would make it possible for immuno-compromised patients to access critical non-coronavirus care without entering hospitals, where they may be more vulnerable to exposure coronavirus.

   "We're at a new level of crisis response with Covid-19," CMS Administrator Seema Verma said in a statement. "With new areas across the country experiencing significant challenges to the capacity of their health care systems, our job is to make sure that CMS regulations are not standing in the way of patient care for COVID-19 and beyond."