CHICAGO — Despite the national uptick in COVID-19 cases and CDC guidelines to avoid travel unless fully vaccinated, air travel has skyrocketed nationwide ahead of spring break.
Earlier this week, Chicago’s top doctor Alison Arwady urged Chicagoans to avoid travel during the typical spring break week for a second straight year, pointing to a need to vaccinate more residents before easing guidelines.
“The concern is when people travel they’ll go somewhere else pick up the covid come back, be asymptomatic and spread to those people who are most vulnerable,” Stroger Hospital physician Sean Dyer said.
Dyer added that there will not be a single day where travel is automatically safe again, pointing to the need to gradually reach herd immunity and see continued declines in new cases.
“We just don’t want to be at this rapid uptick of cases again and that’s very possible that that could happen,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said.