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i want to ask a question. i haven t seen you in a minute. my question for you is, just how were your holidays, nicolle? i ll tell you honestly, they were harrowing. i left northern as this omicron thing that seems to be smothering our city. i was scared that i was going to bring omicron out to where my folks live, out west. we tested. my son sneezed for the first time in 20 months, i had a hard attack, we all tested, everybody was negative, but it was worth it. i think the tricky thing is to take all these smart great scientists and doctors, and all of them said if you re vaccinated, you test before you go, your family is vaccinated, it s safe to gather, but it s still a harrowing moment. even if you shut off your phone, you re aware of this omicron thing. it was great. i m glad i listened to all the smart people, by i have to say it wasn t without worry. how about you? thanks for asking. that makes total sense, and i think that s what we re living with. thank you for ....
numbers we have not seen in a year. but my next guest, dr. adjad says cases are no longer the major metric. first, to steve harrigan with the very latest on this. steve? trace, president biden meeting with the white house covid response team along with a number of governors. the president saying the omicron variant was cause for concern but he said it s not a cause for panic. he also said that the federal government needs to do more when it comes to ramping up testing. the lines have gotten very long in some states. that s why i order fema to set up pop-up sites in places with high demand. in many major cities across the u.s., there s huge lines for testing that go around block after block. people waiting for hours to find out whether or not they have the virus. we re traveling tomorrow. we want to make sure that we re clean. we vaccinated and everything. we didn t feel well, so we want to get tested. so the numbers of new cases continues to go up. many stat ....
peak levels. and even on this day after christmas, people are lining up to get tested. airlines are also struggling with the surge and sick-outs, which means airline travel is beginning to plummet. thousands of cancellations. let s start with you. . we re talking about thousands of flights canceled today alone. think about all the people who travel on the day after christmas, and it s all coming together with so many people thinking they would be able to go see family and friends and get back to work with business as usual starting monday morning for many americans. unfortunately, a thousand flights canceled today. that brings the total up to about 2,000 for the weekend of cancellations and delays, and then you add in those international flights that were canceled as well. we spoke to some travelers that were just frustrated, right? they finally wanted to get out and meet family members, some of them for the first time in two years, but their flights were canceled. on ....
currently hospitalized with covid, about half the record high from january. all of this isn t stopping people from wanting to travel, it is now preventing them from actually being able to. several major u.s. airlines have canceled more than 1,000 flights this weekend over staffing shortages of course caused by the omicron variant. and yesterday christmas eve air travel saw more than 800,000 fewer passengers compared to pre-pandemic levels. i want to get right to cnn s nadia romero and alison kosik who are keeping a close eye on all the covid developments for us. nadia, let s begin with you. you are in atlanta one of the busiest airports in the world. what is happening there? reporter: it is definitely picking up now, but we re in the afternoon hours, compared to this morning where we had a lot of flight cancellations and people unaware potentially of their cancellations. but now we re seeing more people arriving going in, there was a flight heading to, no, i spoke to ....
unlike last year we have tools to gather safely this year, but hardships remain. there are struggles to find tests and testing. u.s. cases just spiked 48% from last week and right now new infections are topping the wave we saw from delta. hospitalizations are also up. the cdc is taking action before the winter wave now shortening a time that health care workers have to test after testing positive. airlines today pushing for that same guidance and staffing shortages are grounding hundreds of christmas eve flights. people are stranded and mask mandates are still in place and the fatigue is real and so is the loss. right now roughly 1,500 americans are doing of covid each day, most overwhelmingly unvaccinated. over 815,000 mesh lives now lost to this virus. our hearts are with those families, especially this holiday. several covid headlines to get to to start us off this hour to. begin we start with our senior medical correspondent elizabeth cohen. let s go through what th ....