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SFO Sees Much Greater Decline in Holiday Passengers Than US Overall

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Nearly 140,000 people flew out of San Francisco International Airport last week, 81% fewer than during the same period last year.

Data from the Transportation Security Administration shows a 58% drop nationally over the same dates.

“People are doing the right thing, or ... the large majority of people are doing the right thing," said UCSF epidemiologist George Rutherford.

Oakland International Airport officials are projecting 200,000 travelers from Dec. 18 through Jan. 3, which would be a 66% drop from 2019.

New COVID-19 cases in San Francisco, San Mateo and Alameda counties have been dropping from their mid-December peak. Rutherford credits the decline to the preemptive measures taken by those counties on Dec. 6, 10 days before the state required the entire region to be placed under the same restrictions.

It’s too early to tell how this holiday season will affect transmission rates, Rutherford said, as cases transmitted today won’t show up in the hospital for at least three weeks.

“Even if we were to stop transmission today, there’s still three weeks of people in the pipeline that are headed to the hospitals and ICUs,” he said.

Marco Siler-Gonzales

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