Growing Number Of Officials Say They Won’t Enforce Coronavirus Crackdowns

Plus: Biden Team Finally Gets .Gov Domain

TOPLINE

On Monday, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert lifted a restriction on social gatherings meant to curb the spread of coronavirus in the state just days ahead of Thanksgiving, becoming the latest elected official who says they’ll allow in-person Thanksgiving celebrations that health authorities say will likely spur a surge of new coronavirus cases.

KEY FACTS

Herbert said he would lift a two-week statewide restriction on gatherings, a move that allows Utah residents to celebrate Thanksgiving with friends and family outside of their household.

The announcement came just days after a handful of sheriff’s departments in California said they would not enforce the state’s new curfew that forbids most social activities from taking place between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. 

Multiple New York sheriffs have also refused to enforce a Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Thanksgiving executive order that limits indoor meetings to only 10 guests or less, including Erie County Sheriff Timothy B. Howard, who said his department has no plans “to break up the great tradition of Thanksgiving dinner.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week issued guidance which discouraged Americans from celebrating Thanksgiving with people outside of their households.

The advice appears to have gone unheeded by many Americans, with Transportation Security Administration data showing more than 3 million people went through an airport checkpoint over the weekend, making it the busiest air travel weekend since March, though still a significant reduction from prior years.

KEY BACKGROUND

The U.S. has both the most coronavirus cases and most deaths attributed to the virus, having cleared the grim milestones of 12 million infections and more than 250,000 fatalities in November, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University. Nationwide, new daily infections have continued to rise since October. Earlier this month, Former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb said he believed Thanksgiving would be an “inflection point” of the pandemic in America and lead to a surge of new cases by December.

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