Omicron Variant Causes COVID-19 Cases To Skyrocket, Health Experts Suggest Vaccination Mandates For Air Travel

Airport illustration. (Unsplash/Chuttersnap)

JAKARTA - Skyrocketing COVID-19 cases hobbled United States airline staff on Monday, led to hundreds of flight cancellations, and prompted the country's top infectious disease expert to suggest the government consider a vaccine mandate for domestic air travel.

Monday's air travel woes capped a gloomy Christmas weekend, for thousands of stranded passengers waiting in airport queues and on customer service phone lines to rebook flights, often days after originally planned.

Rising infections from the Omicron variant forced airlines to cancel flights, as pilots and cabin crew fell ill and needed to be quarantined.

A total of 1,130 flights to, within or outside the United States were canceled as of Monday afternoon, according to flight tracking website flightaware.com. Airlines say the virus and bad weather are to blame.

The average number of new COVID-19 cases in the United States has increased 55 percent, to more than 205,000 per day over the past seven days, according to a Reuters tally, as quoted December 28.

Anthony Fauci, a leading US infectious disease expert, on Monday recommended the federal government consider a vaccine mandate for domestic air travel.

"That's just one of the requirements that I think makes sense to consider," Fauci, the country's top infectious disease official and member of the White House's COVID-19 response team, told MSNBC in an interview.

Separately, US President Joe Biden spoke to reporters on Monday, declining to say whether he supports a vaccine mandate for domestic air travel.

He said he was open to reducing quarantine time for other Americans, after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last week said health workers could isolate for seven instead of 10 days.

In another example of the travel woes caused by the Omicron variant, the CDC said Monday it was investigating 68 cruise ships after reports of COVID-19 cases on board.

On Monday, snowy weather in the Pacific Northwest also caused more than 90 canceled flights to land at Seattle-Tacoma Airport.

A representative for Alaska Airlines, which canceled more than 140 flights on Monday in part because of snowy conditions in Seattle, told a passenger on Twitter it could be hours before someone from customer service could speak by phone, signaling the extent to which the airline's phone line was overwhelmed with passengers. who is frustrated.

"Waiting time was about 7 hours. I'm so sorry," Alaska Airlines wrote on Twitter in response to a customer complaint.

Meanwhile, Southwest Airlines and Alaska Airlines said on Monday they were canceling flights due to the weather. Delta Airlines said in a statement that about 200 of Monday's cancellations were due to weather and the Omicron variant. JetBlue said crew shortages were behind dozens of flight cancellations Monday.