Fauci suggests the US government consider a vaccine mandate for air travel

The dizzying increase in Covid-19 cases affected the staff of the US airlines, causing hundreds of flight cancellations, and leading to the leading expert in infectious diseases of the country to suggest that the government consider a vaccine mandate for domestic air travel.

Air travel problems capped a weekend of Christmas bleak for thousands of stranded passengers waiting in lines at airports and on customer service phone lines to rebook flights, often days later than originally planned.

The increasing infections of the Omicron variant forced airlines to cancel flights because pilots and cabin crews got sick and had to get in quarantine.

A total of 1,130 flights were canceled within, to or from U.S by Monday afternoon, according to the count on the flight-tracking website FlightAware.com. Airlines blamed the virus and bad weather.

The average number of new Covid-19 cases in U.S it has risen 55% to more than 205,000 a day over the past seven days, according to a Reuters tally.

Anthony Fauci It recommended that the federal government consider a vaccine mandate for domestic air travel.

“That’s another requirement that I think is reasonable to consider,” Fauci, also a member of the response team, said in an interview with MSNBC. Covid-19 of the White House.

The president of United States, Joe Biden, speaking to reporters on Monday, declined to say whether he endorsed a vaccine mandate for domestic air travel.

A representative of Alaska Airlines, which canceled more than 140 flights on Monday due in part to snowy conditions in Seattle, told a passenger on Twitter that it would be hours before someone from customer service could speak on the phone, stating how far the phone lines were. of the airlines were overwhelmed with frustrated travelers.

Southwest Airlines Y Alaska Airlines They said Monday that their cancellations were due to the weather. Delta Airlines stated in a statement that its 200 cancellations were due to weather and Omicron variant. JetBlue said the crew shortage was behind the dozens of flight cancellations for the day.