on friday alone. in los angeles, new cases, they are tripled in the last week. and the surging infections making a real mess of holiday travel for so many people. several major airlines canceling hundreds of flights this morning citing staffing shortages. and we are monitoring all the developments. nadia, you are in atlanta. what is the situation for travelers there right now? >> good morning. it is ererily quiet here simply because delta for one canceled about 250 flights on wednesday. so some people were able to get those cancellations earlier this weekend a try to make the changes as best they could. but really we're seeing cancellations happening all across the country with major airlines, delta canceling some 283 flights. united 238. and jetblue, 120. just for christmas day so far. but over this entire weekend, we're looking at more than 1,000 flights being canceled here in the u.s. and you can imagine that impact on travelers. i listened to some of them, their frustration over knowing that they won't be able to see their loved ones for the holiday. >> we were concerned when i saw on the news that they had canceled 100 flights. >> make sure that your phone is charged so you get the alerts. and bring snacks in case lines are long. >> reporter: and so a big part of this is of course the omicron variant that is spreading rapidly across the u.s. those coronavirus cases don't skip the flight crews so they are being impacted as well. that is what the airlines are telling us is the biggest reason, they just don't have the staffing to keep up with all the flights that they were anticipated to do over this holiday weekend. we also know that the weather played a big factor, that was the reason why we saw more than 200 flights canceled by delta in minneapolis because they were expecting snow to fall. and in the pacific northwest, expecting colder than normal temperatures there as well. here in atlanta though, these are the folks that are coming into the airport, they likely were alerted if their flight was canceled or delayed. and those here for a layover may have to sleep in the airport if they can't find a local hotel. >> all right, let's check in with allison in new york. and you are following the rise in outbreaks nationwide. what are you learning? >> there has been this race to get covid tests. i think in the last minute christmas rush, i think it was less about getting a last minute gift than getting that covid-19 test as you sawmill i don't knows of people traveling and hoping to spend time in these home gadhafi he gatherings. in new york city, people are waiting in the cold for the tests. and also some are waiting up to two hours in traffic just to get to the testing site. and in hawaii, wouone testing s saw lines wrapped around for blocks just to get to the testing site with people waiting 2 1/2 hours. covid-19 also causing other disruption in the nhl, announcing that it won't resume its regular schedule until tuesday and that is after there has already been a pause in play. crews ships also encountering issues as well. carnival cruises says that several people tested positive on a ship that left from ft. lauderdale on december 18th and it couldn't dock at two ports. finally was able to dock in the dominican republic and it is expected to return back to port in florida tomorrow. royal caribbean, odyssey of the seas, finding that 55 people on board, a mix of crew and passengers, testing positive for covid-19. a statement from royal caribbean international telling cnn that 95% of the people who boarded the ship when it first left ft. lauderdale were fully vaccinated. but still they wound up with at least 55 people testing positive for covid-19. here in new york as you mentioned at the top, 44,000 new cases of covid-19 reported on friday. that is a 14% jump from the previous day's 38,000. this coming as the governor of new york kathy hochul says that she will shorten the quarantine time from 10 days to 5 days saying it is causing unnecessary staff shortages and frontline workers. this shortened quarantine period is for what she calls critical -- those in the critical workforce, that includes nurses, cooks, clerks, store clerks, servers and bartenders. and that is after the cdc cut quarantines after a positive test from 10 days to 7 days. and so her quarantine period a little more aggressive than the cdc's. >> all right. alison kosik and nadia romero, thank you so much. and in georgia, covid cases have been skyrocketing. here with me now, dr. morgan from piedmont health care. and doctor, good morning. merry christmas to you. thanks to making time to be with us today. >> good morning. merry christmas. >> i want to get your take first on these new cdc guidelines. health care workers with covid-19 who are asymptomatic are going to be allowed to return to work after seven days with a negative test. and the isolation time can be cut further if there are staffing shortages. do you believe that was the right call? >> so i think we'll need to look at the infectivity of the particular virus. would h we see the greatest amount at the onset of symptoms. but the infectious time can begin one to three days before the onset of symptoms and then tarp o taper over the next seven days. so you have an infectious period of about ten days. however narrowing it down to seven days since we know that the peak is at the onset of symptoms certainly makes sense and certainly for health care workers who will be donned in the most absolute ppe possible while they are at work unlike others. so absolutely i think this was the right call. >> and i want to talk to you too about specifically what has been going on in georgia and what you are seeing. over the past would he be, there has been an increase in covid cases and hospitalizations like we're seeing in so much of the country. i'm curious what you are seeing inside hospitals and how you would gauge things right now on the ground in georgia. >> what we see in the state of georgia is in this past week in comparison to last week, we see a four-fold increase in cases in that 18 to 29-year-old demographic and a three-fold increase in cases in that 30 to 39-year-old demographic. we see a parallel with regard to hospitalizations, although somewhat decreased. and so what we have to remember is that our youth while fairly protected because of their age are not invincible. and we have to begin to consider taking that seriously as we look at not only this variant but other variants that continue to challenge our health care systems, challenge our vaccines, and challenge all of our medical therapeutics. >> right. and it is of course christmas day as we noted at the beginning of our interview. and despite the surge that we're seeing, so many families are still getting together. of course they have maybe missed their family for two plus years now. a lot of people trying to get tested, we saw the lines though, it can be impossible to get your hands on one of the at-home tests. what should people be thinking about as they get ready to see their families today even if everyone has tested negative or is vaccinated? >> so that is such a great question. and obviously people get together -- yesterday, christmas eve and today. and we would like to see everyone, not only doubly vaccinated but boosted. so we want to see that with both the moderna and pfizer and as well ass as the johnson & johnson vaccine. and also try to curtail your activities two or three days before you attend an event. hopefully that event is a small intimate event and not a large gathering where there may be mixed people whose vaccination statuses are unknown. so have situational awareness, understand who is around you, and then mitigate your actions accordingly. >> and so many people out there are going i can't believe that we're still thinking about this, but you make such a good point. you have to continue to cal you l calculate as we 2456 gate through the new variant. and i want to ask you about we're seeingyou calculate as we 2456 gate through the new variant. and i want to ask you about we're seeing omicron cases in south africa that were falling as quickly as they rose. do you specific that will be the case here with omicron? >> that is very interesting. and obviously we're a global society. but our society in the u.s. doesn't parallel that of south africa. we do have a higher vaccination rate than they had at the time that omicron hit. but they also had a higher native immunity rate meaning more people have been infected with regard to the percentage of their population. now, what that means in comparison, it may mean that we can't compare apples to apples, that this is really apples to oranges as we look at our demographics with regard to those demographics in south africa with regard to delta and omicron and how many people were already exposed and how many were already vaccinated. so we'll wait to see. >> anyway to know how long this wave could last? we saw delta, sustained wave that we're still dealing with. some hospitals still overrun with delta patients. how long do you see that playing out or is it impossible to know? >> i think that our focus should be not only on this variant but on the unvaccinated where we continue to see these variants emerge. and so the question maybe is less how long will this surge last as opposed to what is our next surge that will certainly come if we cannot get people vaccinated for whatever reasons around the world that we have large populations of people who are unvaccinated and we continue to have these variants develop. if you remember, the delta variant, when it came along, was different from alpha and beta in that that viral load was so high, that we once again had to replace our masks because everybody the vaccinated had the ability to transmit this virus. and now we have omicron, and omicron not only is more connecticut tacontagious but ha the ability to evade our vaccines and also the monday mol therapies. so we must continue to encourage the unvaccinated to get vaccinated or we will not only deal with omicron, but we'll have other surges and we continue on this merry-go-round on and on and on. >> yeah, no question about it. all right, get vaccined and boosted. dr. morgan, thanks so much. >> thank you. merry christmas. still ahead, brand new video of the january 6th insurrection revealing the most violence confrontations. what it could mean for the investigation. and plus, a christmas gift more than 20 years in the making. nasa successfully launchted the most powerful space telescope and can look deeper than ever before. details ahead. johnson & johnson is the world's largest healthcare company. building a future where cancers can be cured. strokes can be reversed. joints can be 3-d printed. and there isn't one definition of what well feels like. there are millions. we're using our world to make your world a world of well. what does it feel like to sell your car to carvana? 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>> what is clear from this video is that this was not a spontaneous uprising. this was a planned event. people came armed for battle. and that is quite apparent in this video. and so that informs the committee about whether there was pre-planning, who was involved in the pre-planning, how was it executed, how was it called off. so i think that it is relevance to all the questions that the committee has to answer. >> and do you think at this point there is any chance that the january 6th committee will pursue a criminal referral for former president trump? we heard in jessica's story that they are thinking about that, that chairman bennie thompson has indicated that it could be on the table due to trump's delayed response. what are your thoughts? >> well, i think that there are charges that are in the atmosphere, if you will, obstruction, conspiracy to obstruct, incitement, conspiracy to incite, even sedition and conspiracy to commit sedition. i'm not sure how easy its to get to a criminal charge by mere inaction if all he did was watch the tv fgleefully, not sure tha gets you a criminal case. i think he needs more of a official difference involvement. not to say that he didn't involve himself affirmatively, but i think that they will need more than his watching the tv andi failing to act. it could be though that the agreement was, look, you guys go there, i will not call out the national guard, i will not call you off, i will have your flank, if you will. those inactions really amount to action and therefore possible basis for criminal referral. but i don't think that yet we have that evidence. at least in the public domain. >> and we also heard in jessica's story that former commissioner bernard kerik says that he is planning to release the documents requested by the house committee. should the committee be allowing kerik to kind of dictate these terms of his cooperation, do you think that they are? >> well, unless the subpoenas say please do not disclose and there is some sort of gag order that prohibits him from doing that, he is free to release whatever he wants. he could release his social security number and his bank accounts for all the committee cares. but he doesn't have the right to not cooperate with the committee and not produce to the committee what the committee is asking for. he can't publicly release it instead of giving it to the co co committee. >> and former president trump is now asking the supreme court to help him keep his white house documents out of the hands of the committee. and the house panel is asking the court to expedite its consideration of that request. we have seen former president trump use this tactic going to court to kind of slow things down in the past. so far the courts have now allowed that to happen and have ruled against him. how do you think it will play out with the supreme court? >> my hope is that the supreme court denies it, that they refuse to take the case, let the court of appeals decision to be the law of this case which would thereby mean that there is no executive privilege claim for mark meadows and steve bannon and all the others who are relying on that to refuse to cooperate. that i think is what the supreme court should do. if however they take cert, they agree to have oral arguments, that is a win for president trump and his allies because their end game is delay in the hopes that this thing peters out if the new congress is controlled by the republicans. >> because that committee is up against time, they will run out in 2022 or after the midterms in 2022. all right. michael zeldin, thanks so much for your insight. we appreciate it. >> my pleasure. coming up, some of the universe's greatest mysteries may soon be solved. the most powerful space telescope built to date just successfully blasted in to space. what scientists are hoping to uncover, that is next. it's the easiest because it's the cheesiest. kraft. for the win win. ♪ my name is austin james. as a musician living with diabetes, fingersticks can be a real challenge. that's why i use the freestyle libre 2 system. with a painless, one-second scan i know my glucose numbers without fingersticks. now i'm managing my diabetes better and i've lowered my a1c from 8.2 to 6.7. take the mystery out of managing your diabetes and lower your a1c. now you know. try it for free at freestylelibre.us when it comes to autism, finding the right words can be tough. finding understanding doesn't have to be. together, we can create a kinder, more inclusive world for the millions of people on the autism spectrum. go to autismspeaks.org (burke) this is why you want farmers claim forgiveness... 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configuration. there is more than 300 single points of failure as this massive tennis court-sized telescope literally unfolds like an origami in space and it will be coming it as it travels a million miles away from earth. so if anything goes wrong this, is not like the hubble space telescope will astronauts can do a spacewalk and fix it. this is going out to a point in space called l-2, it is orbiting the sun and it is so far away that no astronaut is going to be able to repair it. so everything has to go perfectly right. but let's just take a moment and marvel at what happened this morning. is t this is a moment three decades in the making. there have been so many delays, so many moments where the webb tell copy might not have happened. today for it to successfully launch, what an incredible moment for nasa and all the scientists and engineers who made it possible. >> and it gives me chills listening to you describe all of it. you talked about the delays. and it has been decades in the making. walks through a little bit of what it took to get to it point? >> well, there there have been financial issues. i mean, it is $9 billion overbudget. it was supposed to launch initially ten years ago, so this is ten years delayed. $9 billion over budget. there have been political constraints. there have been issues about the telescope's names. and one of the other things was simply getting the telescope to the launch pad. think about this, it is massively expensive, you have to put the telescope on a ship, sale to france. and one of the things that they are so worried about, that they had to consider the possibility of pirates potentially trying to, you know, steal this very expensive telescope. of course that did not happen. but that was part of the reason that there was a little bit of secrecy involved in terms of letting the public know when and where the spelltell telescope w. and so they avoided the pirates and now fingers crossed. as of now everything looks great. solar arrays have unfurled and a express xfrns iconference is ha right now and everybody on the ground says it looks great. >> so we'll see what happens. and so good to see you. we go way back. merry christmas to you, my friend. >> merry christmas. let's get more on this historic launch now. adam frank is an assist astrophysicist and author of a b book, light of the stars. is it overstating things to say that this could change the way we see the universe? >> i don't think so. first of all, merry christmas. and it seems like santa was riding a rocket today. it is not an understatement. you think about hubble space telescope which is the most successful scientific instrument in the history of humanity, how much that changed. it saw alien planets that we had never seen, it showed us black holes. hubble just literally every marvel movie you see that you see with a scene in space, they are using the hubble space telescope image. and james webb will do the same thing but it is 100 times more powerful. so it will rewire our understanding of the universe. >> it is mind-blowing. so you say it is 100 times more powerful than hubble and to sees in infrared. what does that mean for people using these images? >> there are two things. infrared light is light that is longer than the wave lengths of light that our eyes are sensitive to. and for astronomers, that is important because it allows us to see very far back, literally when the universe was a teeny tiny baby. and so much about how we went from the chaos of the big bang to now the structured orderly universe that has galaxies and stars and plan nets in it. and infrared light is the only way to see those baby galaxies. so well see the dawn of time. and we now know thanks to hubble and other telescopes that every star you see in the sky hosts a family of words of alien worlds. and with the james webb telescope, we'll be able to see the atmospheres, we will be able to peer into the atmospheres of those planets and see what they are made of. carbon dioxide, sulfur, proerha seeing whether there is life in those worlds. so that is pretty amazing. >> i'd say so. and you are talking about seeing the dawn of time and earlier galaxies because this has been described as a time machine that will allow us to see some of the earliest galaxies. for someone like me in all of this, how does that work, how -- help us understand how we can see back in time. >> yeah, it is really one of the most freak ydeeky things. it takes time for light to travel like from the computer screen to my eye. are you are looking at someone a foot were a, you are not seeing them as they are, you are seeing them as they were as a nanosecond ago. think about that, everything that you are looking at is a few instants old when you are seeing it. when you look at distant astronomical objects, it is even more extreme. one light year away, it is one year ago. when you are looking at these early galaxies, we're literally looking 13.5 billion years into the past. so there are 13.5 billion light years away, that is not entirely correct, but that is about it, so we're seeing it 13.5 billion years in the future. sorry, in the past. >> in the past. right, right. that is incredible. absolutely incredible. i'm sitting here absorbing this information and learning so much. so getting this -- kristin talked about what it took to get the telescope into space. it was delayed multiple times. it went overbudget, there were concerns about pirates as they had to get it to its launch site. it has about a million miles to go. and it will take a while to get there, about a month. when you think about all the things that could go wrong, you know, are you concerned that this maybe won't quite make it or are you nervous or on edge? it sounds like you are pretty excited about it. i'm pretty excited about it now too. what are the biggest dangers ahead? >> well, i'm super pumped about it and have been for a long time. i've also totally freaked out because this thing, if you want to understand what this thing is, you have to think transformer in space, right? it is like a soup can which has to unfold into a 20-foot wide space telescope. and so there are so many moving parts. this was an audacious plan by nasa. but it is what you have to do if you need a large telescope, which you have to have to observe the kind of things that we want, you can't have it fully assembled in the rocket, you have to assemble itself in space. so there are many, many ways that this thing could fail. but that is why it took so long. it was a really bold and audacious plan. and i'm going to be on edge until we do it. but the beautiful thing here is, this is a gift like we give ourselves. the last two years have been pretty hard on all of us and what this is, this is nows of human beings all working together to produce something amazing. and i think that it will work. and when it does work, we'll all be able to have a little bit of confidence in ourselves that as human beings, as hairless monkeys, we can do amazing things when we work together. >> what a nice message on this christmas morning. adam, your enthusiasm is contagious and you helped us learn so much. thank you. >> it was a pleshl. h pleasure. have a great christmas. coming up, covid cases are spiking record numbers leading to more lockdowns. we'll bring you the latest from around the world. hi. so you're the scientist here. does my aveeno® daily moisturizer really make my dry skin healthier in one day? it's true jen. this prebiotic oat formula moisturizes to help prevent dry skin. impressive. aveeno® healthy. it's our nature.™ new daily moisture for face. this is your home. this is your family room slash gym. the guest bedroom slash music studio. the daybed slash dog bed. the living room slash yoga shanti slash regional office slash classroom. and this is the basement slash panic room. maybe what your family needs is a vacation home slash vacation home. find yours on the vrbo app. ♪ 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hearing across europe as well and in the uk the prime minister said that there wouldn't be any further restrictions ahead of christmas, but he did caution that further measures could come into force ahead of the new year to stem the spread of the omicron variant. and we've seen restrictions being brought into force across the european continent. in greece for example, public celebrations for christmas and new year's eve have been canceled and much like spain and italy, a mask mandate has been enforced and in portugal as of sunday, schools, night clubs and bars will be shut down and people will be urged to work from home. in france and belgium, there will be strict limitations on social gatherings. and in gernlgmany, the potentia for a full lockdown has not been ruled out. leaders are doubling down on their vaccination efforts and their vaccination campaigns urging people to go out and get their vaccines to get the booster jab. and even germany now a potential for a fourth jab to really boost immunity from coronavirus. we've heard from the world health organization warning of a storm coming with the omicron variant set to become the dominant variant in europe in just a matter of weeks. so there are real concerns as we see these numbers rise. but at this stage, those figures haven't translated to a rise in hospitalization rates as we saw with the delta variant. but there still remains a lot to be learned about the omicron variant. jessica. >> all right. thanks so much. and pope francis delivering his annual christmas blessing from the vatican this morning. his message was for a world still suffering through this pandemic. >> translator: open hearts to ensure that necessary medical care and vaccines in particular are provided to those people who need them most. those who generously devote themselves for caring for family members, the sick and the most vulnerable in our midst. >> and vatican analyst john allen is in rome with more for us. and john, there were some restrictions on crowd size for his services today. >> reporter: yeah, hi there, jessica. very merry christmas to you. hope that you are with your loved ones. here in rome, my wife and i are celebrating with some of our closest friends and it is a glorious thing. yes, so the crowd size was less than -- well, less than would be normal in the pre-covid era in st. peter's square. the vatican has had to make accommodations to try to make sure that these big papal events don't become superspreader events. last night there were just about 2,000 people whereas the ordinary capacity would be 20,000. that said the pope certainly took stock today in his message to the city and the world that we are facing fairly dire circumstances. he talked not merely about the health impact of the pandemic, but also its social costs. he talked about women who were more exposed to violence and abuse because they are trapped at home, children being bullied, elderly people who feel isolated, abandoned and alone. and in response, pope francis called for what he called a culture of dialogue and encounter that is reaching out to people and then talking with them, listening to what is on their hearts and minds and trying to be present. the pope's message i suppose, jessica, was if you do that, even in the era of omicron, christmas is the festival of hope and there still is hope. >> nice message there. merry christmas to you, john al lev allen in rome, thanks so much. a quick programming note. join an deny join anderson cooper on new year's eve. and there are winter weather alerts right now while some in the south are experiencing record-breaking warmth. the forecast is next. these are the faces of listerine. the face of millions of germs zapped in seconds. the face of clean. the face of whoa! some are of intensity, others joy. all are of... various: ahhh... listerine. feel the whoa! and that's just basic wavy guy maintenance, right? next up, carvana. oh, boy. carvana just doesn't seem to 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(vo) buy your car online. love it or return it. with carvana. nicorette knows, quitting smoking is freaking hard. you get advice like: just stop. go for a run. go for 10 runs! run a marathon. instead, start small. with nicorette. which can lead to something big. start stopping with nicorette. earn about covid-19, the more questions we have. the biggest question now, what's next? what will covid bring in six months, a year? if you're feeling anxious about the future, you're not alone. calhope offers free covid-19 emotional support. call 833-317-4673, or live chat at calhope.org today. snowfall and winter weather may bring a white christmas for parts of the u.s., and in the south spring-like temperatures will likely break records. tyler, it sounds like a mixed bad, depending on where you are, for what you can expect this christmas day. >> depending on where you live, you may get record-like heat or feet of snowfall. not feeling like christmas down across the southern tier of the u.s., where records every in jeopardy all the way through midweek next week, from the southern plains to the mid-atlantic. temperatures should be in the 50s this time of year, but we'll see temperatures get up to the 0s and the 0s. portions of oklahoma and texas we're only roughly ten degrees off of our july 4th high. so that's the kind of heat we're dealing with at the moment. that will continue into next week we'll see a cooldown, but it will still be above average. the northeast is where we have a winter weather advisory in effect at this time. we could see up for a quarter inch of ice in portion of upstate new york, into portions of massachusetts. that's why we have the winter weather advisory in effect. treacherous travel up here across the northeast, as the system pushes over, given a mixed bag of weather there. the northern plains, the great lakes, they'll see snowfall over the next 24 hours of there are portions of north dakota and minnesota that could see up to a foot of snowfall. we're measuring the snow in feet across all of the mountains out west, especially the sierra nevada, where we could see north of six feet of snow. some isolated areas, could get up to ten feet. rainfall across the lower elevations. all of this is much needed, and the reason we have basically 30 million people until winter weather alerts at this time. even portland and seattle will see snowfall this weekend as well. it will continue on into sunday. on its heels yet another system. we're pretty much locked in this crazy weather pattern right now, both for the west coast and the east coast. that's what happening when the jet stream starts going crazy. kinds of like a seesaw across the west coast. the temperatures are plunging. that's where we're getting the winter weather, and then downstream here that's where that record heat is building. this heat, jessica, is about 30 degrees above average. believe it or not, it's actually cooler in puerto rico. >> wow, very warm christmases down south. tyler, thank you so much for the update. now to a community that was able to come together despite tragedy. in mayfield, kentucky, two congregations became one for a joint christmas eve service. they gathered in an empty lot with light in their cell phones, they sang "silent night." right now thousands are still recovering after their homes and businesses were ruined by the tornado outbreak earlier this month. coming up, going beyond the call of duty to bring holiday cheer to those in need. one emt is taking feeding the hung into his own hands. we'll have the story next. to help prevent dry skin. impressive. aveeno® healthy. it's our nature.™ new daily moisture for face. ray loves vacations. but his diabetes never seemed to take one. everything felt like a 'no'. everything. but then ray went from no to know. with freestyle libre 2, now he knows his glucose levels when he needs to. and... when he wants to. so ray... can be ray. take the mystery out of your glucose levels, and lower your a1c. now you know. try it for free. visit freestylelibre.us jeff's been to the bottom of the ocean. the tops of mountains. and wherever this guy runs off to. a life well lived should continue at home. with home instead care, older adults can stay home, safe, and happy. home instead. to us, it's personal. to support a strong immune system your body needs a routine. centrum helps your immune defenses every day, with vitamin c, d and zinc* season after season. ace your immune support with centrum. now with a new look! xfinity rewards are our way of thanking you just for being with us. enjoy rewards like sing family fun nights! rent sing for $1 then belt out all your favorite tunes from the movie with sing karaoke. plus, see sing 2 in theaters with buy-one-get-one free fandango tickets. join over a million members by signing up for free on the xfinity app. our thanks. your rewards. he is an emt by trade, but in his spare time, this first responder feeds the hungry, handing out his own home-cooked meals to the homeless in new york city. britain gingras. >> hi, my name is chris. i'm with the fire department. >> reporter: he's hoping for a smile, that's it. >> putting a smile on somebody's face could change the world around. >> reporter: so twice a year, around the holidays, he makes home-cooked meals. >> bread, some mashed potatoes. >> reporter: packs them up, along with a wrapped gift, and drives around, looking for people who could use a little something extra. >> here is a half and gloves, and a fork and knife. i've always had a heart for people, i did, but i think the pandemic made me really realize how thankful we should be. >> reporter: in the early days of the pandemic, the veteran emt spent months away from his family because of covid-19. he worked long shifts, providing medical care in queens, one of the hardest-hit areas of the city. >> we were depleted by so much. the fact that i was healthy the whole entire time made me realize that there must be a reason why i'm still healthy to this day and not sick, so i can stand up and do more than what i possibly can do. >> reporter: he says buys a cup of coffee for a stranger turned into buying a meal, which turned into making many meals for those in need. it's now hits own little tradition. >> hopefully this can teach people to be more careful with one another. >> reporter: his colleagues aren't surprised by his acts of warmth and generosity. they say it's thanks to chris, many of them made it through the toughest of days of the pandemic. >> people like chris came along and cooking off the ledge. they remind you why you're here. without people like chris, a lot of us would have retired or quit. he keeps us going. >> reporter: why the extra effort all by himself? >> here you go, merry christmas. >> reporter: again, it's simple. >> i just like making people happy, you know in once i see other people, i'm happy. >> reporter: when you see a smile? >> i cry. [ laughter ] >> reporter: cnn, new york. good morning, merry christmas. i'm jessica dean in washington. seasons greetings are being met with a seasonal surge of the coronavirus. a spike in new cases. hospitalizations seem to be holding steady. the u.s. now averaging 182,000 cases a day. new york is breaking new records. 44,000 cases reported on friday alone. los angeles, new cases tripled in the last week. the surge making a real mess of holiday travel for so many people across the country. several major airlines ca cancelling hundreds of flights this morning, citing staffing shortages. nadia, let's start with you. you're at one of the busiest airports in the world, atlanta, what is the situation for traveler there right now? >> reporter: many of them are trying to figure out if the flight is still on. now, luckily for some travelers, i guess at least luckily in this situation, they were told on wednesday delta was cancelling some 250 flights. it gave them time to get a different flight, different airline or figure out how they would get ho