The number of travelers passing through airport security checkpoints dropped on Sunday to the lowest number seen in a single day over the past decade as the coronavirus continues to spread domestically, according to the Transportation Security Administration.
“BREAKING: On Sunday, @TSA officers around the country screened a total of 180,002 passengers at security checkpoints. It’s the lowest number screened by TSA in the last 10 years. Exactly one year earlier 2,510,294 people were screened at checkpoints across the nation,” TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein wrote on Twitter Monday.
BREAKING: On Sunday, @TSA officers around the country screened a total of 180,002 passengers at security checkpoints. It’s the lowest number screened by TSA in the last 10 years. Exactly one year earlier 2,510,294 people were screened at checkpoints across the nation.
— TSAmedia_LisaF (@TSAmedia_LisaF) March 30, 2020
Because all airline passengers must pass through federally operated security checkpoints before boarding domestic or international flights, the number of security checks is an indication of how many people are flying.
The number of travelers began dropping in early March, days after the United States reported its first death and the Trump administration expanded travel restrictions to bar foreigners from entering the U.S. if they had visited Iran in the past 14 days. The government also warned against traveling to Italy and South Korea, which were seeing spikes in cases. On Feb. 28, the U.S. had its first known case of community coronavirus spread.
On March 11, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a “pandemic,” and two days later, President Trump declared a national emergency. The U.S. began blocking most noncitizens from Europe from traveling here, with the exception of British citizens.
On March 16, 1.2 million passengers passed through airport security, but by the end of the week, it had dropped to one-quarter of that figure, TSA data shows. San Francisco ordered residents to shelter in place, and other cities, including New York City, announced similar bans on nonessential travel. By March 23, approximately 331,000 people were being screened by TSA.
In the midst of the virus’s spread, TSA has reported officers who work at security checkpoints testing positive. As of Monday, 52 officers of the agency’s 50,000-officer workforce have the virus and are not at work.
The number of confirmed cases domestically has soared from a dozen in February to nearly 145,000 as of Monday afternoon.
