The number of COVID-19 patients being treated in hospitals across the United States reached 90 000 on Friday after nearly doubling in the last month, just as holiday gatherings are expected to propel the next wave of infections.
The rate of hospitalisations, now at the highest level since the pandemic began, has pushed some hospitals beyond capacity, and comes after weeks of rising infection rates across the country. That is likely to increase as people who mingled with relatives and friends over Thanksgiving gradually get sick, health experts say.
Many health experts and politicians pleaded with Americans to refrain from gathering for their traditional communal Thanksgiving feasts this year, warning that socialising between households would accelerate the rate of community transmission and push an already strained healthcare system to the brink.
Some abided by the public health guidance, spending their Thanksgiving on Thursday seeing their family over video calls. But others chose to travel anyway.
On the day before Thanksgiving, typically one of the busiest travel days of the year in the United States, more than 1.07 million people transited through US airports the most of any single day since the start of the pandemic, according to the Transportation Security Administration.
US COVID-19 vaccinations could take place in early to mid-December:
