(New York) About 7,500 flights were canceled by airlines across the world over Christmas weekend, with the Omicron variant of COVID-19 continuing its meteoric rise through the holidays, with pilots in quarantine in particular.
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, New York health authorities have sounded the alarm on the rise in hospitalizations of children: those under five, who are not old enough to be vaccinated, now represent half of hospitalizations in the city.
According to the latest report from the Flightaware website, for Sunday alone, around 2,200 international or domestic air routes were canceled, 7,200 others recorded delays and the disruptions are expected to continue on Monday (at least 735 cancellations planned) and Tuesday (160 at this stage).
Pilots, flight attendants and other staff members had to be quarantined after being exposed to COVID-19, which forced the companies Lufthansa, Delta, United Airlines, Alaska Airlines, JetBlue or even British Airways 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 manage our operations, ”explained the American company United Airlines, which had to cancel around 10% of its scheduled flights on Friday and Saturday, according to Flightaware.
Delta Air Lines also canceled more than 300 flights on Saturday, and 170 the day before, again according to Flightaware, citing both Omicron and, occasionally, unfavorable weather.
Snow and rain
The weather conditions have indeed contributed to the disruption of flights: in the western United States, snowstorms and sharp drops in temperature were 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).
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.
Across the planet, flight cancellations have disrupted the desire to resume travel this year for the holidays, after a 2020 Christmas hit hard by the pandemic.
According to estimates by the American Automobile Association, more than 109 million Americans were scheduled to leave their immediate area by plane, train or car between December 23 and January 2 – a 34% increase from the year last.
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.