US travel in chaos amid flight cancellations due to surging cases

SEATTLE • Rocketing Covid-19 cases hobbled US airline staff on Monday, causing hundreds of flight cancellations and prompted the country's top infectious diseases expert to suggest that the government consider a vaccine mandate for domestic air travel.

Monday's travel woes capped a glum Christmas weekend for thousands of stranded passengers waiting in airport queues and on customer service hotlines to rebook their flights.

Airlines have struggled with staffing issues, as the spread of infections from the Omicron variant kept infected pilots, cabin crew and other workers at home.

Bad weather has also taken a toll on travel. A total of 1,208 flights into, within or out of the United States were cancelled by Monday afternoon.

The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it was shortening the recommended isolation time for Americans with Covid-19 to five days from its previous guidance of 10 days, so long as they are asymptomatic.

The move could help airlines and other businesses mitigate staff shortages from the disease.

Apple on Monday said it had closed all seven New York City retail stores due to an increase in Covid-19 cases.

The CDC said it was investigating 68 cruise ships following reports of Covid-19 cases on board.

Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, also recommended that the government consider a vaccine mandate for domestic air travel.

"That is just another one of the requirements that I think is reasonable to consider," Dr Fauci said.

But US President Joe Biden has declined to say if he endorses such a mandate.

On Monday, snowy weather in the Pacific Northwest was also part of the reason for more than 110 cancelled flight arrivals at Seattle-Tacoma Airport.

A representative for Alaska Airlines told a passenger on Twitter that it would be hours before someone from customer service could speak by phone, signalling the extent to which airline phone lines were overwhelmed.

"The hold time is about seven hours. I am so sorry," Alaska Airlines wrote.

Mr Harley Garner, 27, a creative strategist from Portland, and his brother from Seattle were staying with their parents in Pahrump, Nevada, over the holidays and had planned to fly home on Sunday.

Both brothers' respective flights - to Portland via Alaska Airlines and to Seattle via Allegiant Airlines - were cancelled on Sunday afternoon. Both managed to book seats on later flights.

When their second flights were also cancelled, they decided to drive some 17 hours back to Portland and Seattle, respectively.

Mr Garner said the most frustrating part of the travel nightmare was the last-minute notification of cancellations.

"If you know a plane isn't going to leave one place... then just cancel that flight," he said. "Don't play these games like you don't know that there is a staff shortage because of the coronavirus."

The Omicron variant is sending daily caseloads in parts of the US soaring to levels higher than last winter's pandemic peak.

Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Puerto Rico are among the areas that have reported more Covid-19 cases in the past week than in any other seven-day period.

On Sunday, even as holiday interruptions to data reporting began to affect daily case totals, the seven-day national average of new daily cases neared 215,000, a 83 per cent jump over the past 14 days.

The national record for average daily cases is 251,232, set last January during a post-holiday surge.

Deaths also increased by 3 per cent during that time, to a seven-day average of 1,328.

About 72,000 are hospitalised with Covid-19, 7 per cent higher than in the previous two weeks, but still well below previous peaks.

Mr Biden on Monday said some US hospitals could be "overrun" by Covid-19 cases, though he stressed that Americans should not panic. "Because there have been so many vaccinations and boosters, we are not seeing hospitalisations rising as much as they did previously."

But there are "hospitals in some places that are going to be overrun both in terms of equipment and staff", the President added.

On top of expanding free testing sites, the administration would soon send 500 million at-home test kits to Americans, he said.

REUTERS, NYTIMES, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE