Holiday air travel expected to be down; healthcare workers say 'don't share your air'
SAN FRANCISCO - If you're traveling out of San Francisco International Airport for the holidays, expect to see fewer passengers.
Travel between Dec. 8 and Tuesday was down 81% from the same time period last year. During those dates, roughly 191,000 passengers passed through security checkpoints at SFO. Last year, that number was over 1million during the same time.
And for those who arrive or return to San Francisco, there is a 10-day COVID-19 quarantine for most passengers.
Many of California's healthcare workers wish the passenger numbers weren't even that high.
Doctors and nurses, overwhelmed with ill-advised Thanksgiving gatherings, put out a "desperate call" this week for residents to avoid a Christmas repeat they said would overwhelm the state’s medical system.
The staff from Kaiser Permanente, Dignity Health and Sutter Health, which together cover 15 million Californians, offered what they called a "prescription" for Californians to slow the virus spread, a marketing effort dubbed "Don’t share your air." The underlying message is to stay away from people from other households, which is what many failed to do at Thanksgiving.
"We simply will not be able to keep up if the COVID surge continues to increase," Kaiser Permanente chairman and CEO Greg Adams said. "We’re at or near capacity everywhere."
The state reported 32,659 newly confirmed cases Tuesday and another 653 patients were admitted to hospitals, one of the biggest one-day hospitalization jumps. A state data models predict nearly 106,000 hospitalizations in a month if nothing changes. The current level is 17,843.
The officials blamed Thanksgiving transmissions they fear will be repeated if people gather for Christmas and New Year’s and don’t take precautions like wearing masks, socially distancing, staying home as much as possible and not socializing with others. Travel across the country to visit Grandma and Grandpa also didn't help, they said.
"We are really making a clarion and desperate call to Californians to not repeat what happened at Thanksgiving," said Dr. Stephen Parodi, The Permanente Medical Group’s associate executive director. "Our hospital systems cannot afford to see another increase like we saw with Thanksgiving."
California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly reiterated that the state’s modeling shows some hospitals and regions of the state will be overwhelmed in coming weeks if the current surge continues. But he said that’s not a given.
"Let’s make some choices over the next 10 days that we will never regret, because our families, our loved ones, our communities will be more intact because of it," he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.