(New York) About 7,900 flights were canceled by airlines across the world over Christmas weekend, with the Omicron variant of COVID-19 continuing its meteoric rise during the holidays, including in flight attendants, contaminated or exposed to the virus.
Europe is currently the region with the most cases in the world, with 3,022,868 cases in the last seven days or 57% of the global total, as well as the most deaths, followed by the area comprising the United States and Canada (1,421,516 cases).
France notably crossed the threshold of 100,000 new cases of COVID-19 in 24 hours on Saturday, Christmas Day, an absolute record in the country, while the government must reassess the situation on Monday.
The contaminations detected then ebbed on Sunday: 27,697 new cases in 24 hours, according to official figures, a drop linked to the closure of a very large number of pharmacies and testing centers on Christmas Day.
In the United States, where nearly 190,000 new cases have been identified daily over the past seven days, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University, health authorities in New York have sounded the alarm on the increase in hospitalizations of children: those under five, who are not old enough to be vaccinated, now represent half of hospitalizations in the city.
In addition to the thousands of international or domestic air connections canceled, tens of thousands of flights recorded delays between Friday and Sunday, to the chagrin of those who wanted to resume travel for the holidays this year, after a hard-hit Christmas 2020. whip by the pandemic.
The disruptions are expected to continue on Monday (at least 800 flights threatened with cancellations) and Tuesday (170 at this point).
The pandemic has notably resulted in a shortage of flight personnel. Pilots, flight attendants and other staff have had to be quarantined after being exposed to COVID-19. Companies such as Lufthansa, Delta, United Airlines, Alaska Airlines, JetBlue and even British Airways have therefore been forced to cancel flights.
“The peak of Omicron cases across the country [les États-Unis] this week has had a direct impact on our crews and the people who run our operations, ”said United Airlines.
The weather has also played a role in the disturbances in the United States: in the West, snowstorms and severe drops in temperature announced further complicating an already chaotic situation.
During this long weekend, Chinese airlines, in particular China Eastern and Air China, alone cut more than 2,000 flights, many of them connecting Xi’an, where 13 million people are confined.
In this country which has applied a “zero COVID-19 strategy since last year”, the city of Xi’an announced Sunday a “total” disinfection and tightened restrictions, at a time when China records a record number of contaminations in COVID-19 for 21 months, a few weeks before the Beijing Olympics (February 4-20).
Petri dish
In Belgium, new restrictions have aroused the anger of the inhabitants of Brussels: several thousand people, 5,000 according to the police, demonstrated on Sunday in the Belgian capital to protest against the closure of theaters imposed by the authorities to stem the spread of the Omicron variant.
At sea too, the coronavirus has struck vacationers. According to the Washington Post daily, several ships have been refused a stopover in several Caribbean ports.
“We sail aboard a Petri dish,” a container used in laboratories for the cultivation of bacteria, Ashley Peterson, a 34-year-old passenger of the Carnival Freedom who was not allowed to dock on the island told the newspaper. Dutch from Bonaire. “I feel like I spent last week at a super-propagating event.”
In a statement, Carnival Cruises confirmed that a “small number on board have been isolated due to a positive COVID-19 test.”
According to the CDC, the main public health agency in the United States, more than 60 cruise ships were under investigation by U.S. health officials on Sunday after cases of COVID-19 appeared on board. These 60 ships have reached the “threshold” set by the CDC to merit such an investigation, it is stated on the agency’s website.
The COVID-19 pandemic has killed at least 5,394,775 people worldwide since the WHO China office reported the disease onset at the end of December 2019 in China, according to a report established by the AFP from official sources on Sunday. The World Health Organization estimates that the real toll could be two to three times higher.