More than 60% of people in the United States decided to change their Thanksgiving plans amid the uptick in coronavirus cases.
Sixty-one percent of respondents for the latest installment of the Axios/Ipsos Coronavirus Index said they are changing their Thanksgiving plans in some way.
Among the most common changes that people shared, 29% said they will only be seeing people in one’s immediate household. Twenty-four percent said they are having a smaller dinner than originally planned, and nearly 1 in 10 said they no longer plan to celebrate the festivities at all.
There is an ideological divide among respondents’ answers for their Thanksgiving plans. Three out of 4 Democrats surveyed said they changed their holiday plans, while just 49% of Republicans surveyed said they had chosen to do the same thing.
Additionally, 12% of respondents said they’ll no longer be traveling, and 1% told surveyors that they will be driving instead of flying, following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation against traveling during the holiday week. Over the weekend, the Transportation Security Administration screened more than 3 million people, less than half the number they screened during the same time period a year ago.
The poll surveyed 1,002 random adults aged 18 or older between Friday and Monday and carries a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.
The country is currently experiencing a sharp rise in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. To date, there have been more than 12.4 million COVID-19 diagnoses in the country, while more than 258,000 people have died from the virus in the U.S., according to the John Hopkins University coronavirus tracker.
