MILLIONS of Americans are expected to go away for the July 4 celebrations despite the country seeing a rise in cases of the Covid Indian Delta variant.
An estimated 44 million people are expected to hit the roads this weekend while air travel has exceeded pre-pandemic levels for the first time.
Around 2.15million people passed through US airport screening checkpoints Thursday, the Transportation Security Administration has said, making it the second highest figures on record since the coronavirus pandemic.
Just four days earlier a figure of 2.17m was recorded.
This compares with just 58,330 people recorded on the same day in 2019
The figures come though as the Delta variant sweeps across the US triggering a rise in cases.
More than 30 per cent of adults are still not vaccinated and officials have raised concerns about vaccinated and unvaccinated people mixing in large numbers.
President Joe Biden has warned “lives will be lost” because people have not got the jab.
The American Automobile Association has forecast 3.5m airline passengers will be on the move between July 1 and July 5.
It also expects 43.6m people to take to their cars over the same period, a figure it believes to be the highest ever for Independence Day.
It comes as gas prices topped $3 per gallon for the first time since autumn 2014.
The combined figure of those travelling by car or plane – 47.7m people – is 40 per cent more than last year and just 2.5 per cent lower than the record level set in 2019.
Hopper economist Adit Damodam told ABC News that holiday hotspots were Las Vegas, Miami and Orlando while those choosing to go outside the US were picking the Caribbean and Mexico.
Particularly busy airports will be Chicago O’Hare, LAX, and Las Vegas McCarran International Airport, he said.
Around 2m passengers are expected to fly with United Airlines between Thursday and Tuesday.
Around 400,000 people are expected to attend Nashville’s July 4 celebration which features country star Brad Paisley.
Another big celebration is being held in Huntington Beach, southern California with some 500,000 people attending.
Biden said he was “going to celebrate” the holiday and is preparing to welcome more than 1,000 people to the White House for a celebration.
First responders, essential workers and troops have been invited for a cookout and fireworks display to mark what the administration is calling a “summer of freedom”
Biden said: “I’m going to celebrate it. There’s great things happening… All across America, people are going to ballgames, doing good things.”
But he also sounded a word of caution about the spread of the Delta variant.
“I am concerned that people who have not gotten vaccinated have the capacity to catch the variant and spread the variant to other people who have not been vaccinated,” he said.
“I am not concerned there’s going to be a major outbreak, in other words that we’re going to have another major epidemic nationwide, but I am concerned that lives will be lost.”
Arkansas suffering particularly badly from a large surge, with its case rate increasing by more than 200 per cent in the last two weeks from around 230 cases per day to more than 700 per day.
Covid cases have also risen in Nevada by 167 per cent in the past two weeks up from around 250 per day to around 660 per day.
Medics have warned the July 4 celebrations could cause a fourth wave of Covid cases.
“We remain concerned about not just holiday, but just the ongoing emergence of the Delta variant across the country, which is going to be so much more transmissible than the variants that we had before,” Dr Marjorie Bessel, chief clinical officer of Banner Health in Phoenix, Arizona, told DailyMail.com.
“It’s going to seek out those populations that are not vaccinated. And in the state of Arizona, we’re not vaccinated at the level that we need to [be].”
The latest figures show that the US is recording around 250 deaths a day from Covid and 12,000 cases.
A total of 66.8 per cent of adults have received at least the first dose of the vaccine.
Biden had previously said he wanted 70 per cent vaccinated by July 4.
