Airlines canceled hundreds more flights Sunday, citing staffing problems tied to COVID-19. But shoppers shrugged off the omicron variant, and holiday sales rose at the fastest pace in 17 years, according to one spending measure.
NEWARK, N.J. — The latest COVID-19 variant is upending holiday plans for tens of thousands of travelers — but it didn’t do much damage to holiday shopping., as the nation’s travel woes extended beyond Christmas, with no clear indication when normal schedules would resume.
“A full reopening of the U.S. economy will be delayed yet again,’’ said Robin Brooks, chief economist at the Institute of International Finance, a trade group of financial firms.For now, the variant is playing havoc with travel. More than 1,100 flights entering, leaving or flying within the U.S. were called off, according to the flight-tracking website FlightAware.
It took her five hours to get a COVID-19 test the day before to enter the U.S. She’s visiting for three weeks, and Herlocker said he fears that she will get stuck here if she doesn’t have a negative test result before trying to return home to France. “I don’t think we have much to worry about if we take all the precautions, and I think we will be entering a situation where we just live with” the virus, he said.
Also Sunday, the nation’s top infectious disease doctor acknowledged that he was frustrated with the limited supply of COVID-19 tests. Fauci said he was pleased with evidence that omicron causes less severe illness for most people. But he warned against complacency because the rapid spread of the disease could “override a real diminution in severity,” because so many more people could get infected.
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