pandemic
BB relaxes ICRRS to facilitate businesses’ loan
Bangladesh Bank (BB) has relaxed again banks’ Internal Credit Risk Rating System (ICRRS) considering the impact of the pandemic on the economic activities.
As a result, the businesses will be benefited as banks can provide loans following relaxing ICRRS, the central bank officials said.
The marginal ICRRS score fell to 50 percent from 55 percent.
Read: BB asks NBFIs comply with Banker's Book Evidence Act-2021 to avoid imprisonment
The Banking Regulations and policy department (BRPD) of BB issued a circular on Wednesday relaxing the ICRRS adding that financial statements of different sectors including the industry, trading, and service sector of the year were not as stable as before.
Institutions face difficulties in re-borrowing or renewing previous loans as the picture is relatively marginal, the BB circular stated.
In this context, the BB relaxed the ICRRS to accelerate business activities across the country.
Read: Economy resilient, no liquidity shortages in banks: BB governor
The BRPD directive states that the businesses can avail of the required loan facility from the bank considering the financial condition and/or to continue the renewal of the existing loan.
Bangladesh Bank's role in steering economic recovery appreciated
Economists and business insiders said the stimulus loans for the big and small businesses have worked like oxygen to face a crisis during the pandemic period.
Former BB governor Dr. Salehuddin Ahmed told UNB that the central bank has done a tremendous job, emphasizing implementation of stimulus loans.
Despite some criticism of delayed disbursement, the BB’s contribution to economic recovery is appreciable, he said.
Read:BB asks banks to cut tax on service value of non-resident nationals
Md. Jashim Uddin, president of the Federation of Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce & Industry (FBCCI) and Faruque Hassan, president of Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) echoed similar sentiments.
They also acknowledged that the support of BB has worked to increase the confidence of businesses which helped them rebound in the production of the industries.
Latest update of stimulus loan disbursement shows that around Tk1.218 lakh crore (Tk1, 00,218 crore) has been disbursed so far in first and second phases from 10 incentive packages managed by Bangladesh Bank.
Of this, Tk 42,173 crore was disbursed to the industry and services sector, Tk 20,793 crore in cottage, small and medium enterprises, Tk 513 crore in refinancing loans in the pre-shipment sector, and Tk 2,492 crore disbursed among low-income professional farmers and small traders.
Besides, Tk 21,250 crore from the export development fund, Tk 1,933 crore from SME sector loan guarantee scheme, Tk 5,000 crore for workers in export-oriented industries, Tk 1,390 crore for consumer interest subsidy and Tk 4466 crore for agriculture sector refinancing scheme. has been distributed.
However, a fund of Tk 1,000 crore was set up for the salaries and allowances of the employees of hotels, motels and theme parks in the tourism sector but no loan was disbursed.
The BB started implementation of the second phase of 10 stimulus loan packages from July of current fiscal year 2021-22 through banks and FIs. The BB released an update of stimulus loan activities till January 11, recently. It said banks and financial institutions (FI) have disbursed Tk 15,000 crore among 67,000 entities in big and small categories across the country till January 11, 2022.
According to the BB, in the first phase, Tk 32,703 crore was disbursed from the announced incentive fund of Tk 40,000 crore for the industry and services sector. Some 3,306 units have received this loan. In the second phase Tk 9,470 crore has been distributed from this fund to 972 businesses.
Although the interest rate of this fund is 9 percent, the customers have to pay 4.5 percent while the government bears the rest.
Besides, Tk 5,407 crore has been disbursed in the second phase under the announced stimulus package for cottage, small and medium enterprises. Around 35,760 enterprises have received loans from this fund of Tk 20,000 crore. In the first phase, a loan of Tk 15,386 crore was given from this fund to 97,814 enterprises.
The interest rate on this loan is 9 percent, but here again the government is giving a 5 percent subsidy on the interest rate.
Read: BB asks banks to follow Covid guidelines till Feb 21
In the agriculture sector Tk 379 crore has been disbursed to 30238 farmers/ clients from the agriculture refinance funds in the second phase. In the first phase Tk 4295 crore was distributed to 1.85 lakh farmers and agro based industries.
The farmers and agro industries have received the loans at 4 percent interest rate and Bangladesh Bank has provided the refinance funds to the lender banks at 1.0 percent interest rate.
Bangladesh Bank officials said that there was not as much interest to receive stimulus loans in the second phase. Demand for stimulus loans was higher among the businesses in the first phase.
In fact, the time has now come for those who have taken loans to repay their loans, they told UNB. And this too is a sign of the recovery underway.
Pandemic's fallout: A shrinking middle-class and the 'new poor'
The pandemic has had a damaging impact on both urban and rural Bangladesh -- while many lost their jobs in cities and returned to their native villages, households after households plunged into poverty in the countryside.
Since the imposition of the first lockdown in 2020, closures of small businesses like grocery shops in the rural and semi-rural areas have meant less income available for families. Covid-induced supply chain disruptions reduced farm outputs, hitting hard the farmers and those running agri enterprises.
Read: Govt to widen social safety coverage to protect poor from pandemic loss
In fact, for many households in Bangladesh, Covid wiped out their entire life savings -- many tucked into their financial cushion to ensure two square meals a day for their families and cover the basic healthcare expenses. The financial aid by the government indeed helped, but helped a little only.
As health experts warn of an imminent third wave of Covid, economists say that a large chunk of small traders across rural Bangladesh and the erstwhile middle-class (who migrated back from cities) have been hit hard by the pandemic-induced liquidity crunch.
According to Prof Mustafizur Rahman of the Centre for Policy Dialogue, a large portion of the population above the poverty line in rural Bangladesh -- the middle-class -- has fallen below the economic marker. "They are now among the marginalised population or the 'new poor'," he said.
This year's Boi Mela to be held from February 15-28
The 2022 edition of the traditional Amar Ekushey Book Fair, which usually begins on the very first day of February, will be held from February 15 to February 28, subject to certain conditions regarding the ongoing Omicron situation of the COVID-19 global pandemic.
The new date was stated in a letter issued by the Bangla Academy and signed by the secretary of the academy AHM Lokman on Sunday.
“Considering the current situation of COVID-19, the government has decided to hold 'Amar Ekushey Book Fair 2022' from 15th February to 28th February 2022 subject to certain conditions. Therefore, all the staff involved in the Book Fair have been requested to take COVID-19 vaccines and booster doses as per the requirement of adults including vaccination,” the letter stated.
The letter also stated that the academy has already sent a letter to the Director General of the Directorate General of Health Services to set up a vaccination booth at the academy premises as per the instructions of the Ministry.
READ: Boi Mela to be open for 3.5 hours a day due to COVID-19
Earlier on January 16, the Ministry of Cultural Affairs postponed this year's Amar Ekushey Book Fair for two weeks due to the recent surge in COVID-19 cases and deaths across the country.
Last year, the traditional month-long fair was also postponed to avoid the spread of coronavirus infections. The fair finally began on March 18 at the Bangla Academy premises and the adjacent venue in the capital's Suhrawardy Udyan.
READ: Police promise ‘flawless security’ at Ekushey Boi Mela
The fair concluded on April 12, two days before the country went into a hard lockdown from April 14 to curb down the surge of the Delta variant of COVID-19, and the overall fair failed to get its usual momentum with publishers and sellers who suffered a significant amount of losses in their businesses.
Writ seeks 30-day closure of educational institutions as pandemic surges
A writ petition seeking a 30-day closure of educational institutions due to renewed Covid-19 surge has been filed before the High Court. The writ was filed on Wednesday by Supreme Court lawyer Yunus Ali Akond.
Read:Classes to go online if Covid spreads to educational institutions: Minister “When the pandemic started in the country, the government directed to shut the education institutions and the students were less infected. Currently the covid-19 situation is on the spike and the students of schools, madrashas, colleges and universities are going to their institutions,” he said in the writ petition. “Many students use public transport to go to school and they might have been infected with the virus. As a result, there is a possibility of infecting other family members. So the educational institutions should be closed for 30 days,” said the writ. The writ will likely be heard by the bench of Justice Farah Mahbub and Justice SM Maniruzzaman on Thursday. On March 15, 2020, a writ was filed in this regard. The writ also sought directives to take steps in identifying those infected with Covid-19 in all ports including land and airports and strengthening monitoring in all land ports.
Read: JU suspends in-person classes It also sought directives to shut the educational institutions and issued an interim order to take necessary steps in all ports and entrance of the country to fight of Covid-19. Cabinet secretary, health secretary, education secretary, civil aviation and tourism secretary, home secretary and directorate general of health services were made respondents to the writ.
Hospitalizations skyrocket in kids too young for COVID shots
Hospitalizations of U.S. children under 5 with COVID-19 soared in recent weeks to their highest level since the pandemic began, according to government data released Friday on the only age group not yet eligible for the vaccine.
The worrisome trend in children too young to be vaccinated underscores the need for older kids and adults to get their shots to help protect those around them, said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Since mid-December, with the highly contagious omicron variant spreading furiously around the country, the hospitalization rate in these youngest kids has surged to more than 4 in 100,000 children, up from 2.5 per 100,000.
The rate among children ages 5 to 17 is about 1 per 100,000, according to the CDC data, which is drawn from over 250 hospitals in 14 states.
Overall, “pediatric hospitalizations are at their highest rate compared to any prior point in the pandemic,” Walensky said.
Also read: Omicron may sideline two leading drugs against COVID-19
She noted that just over 50% of children ages 12 to 18, and only 16% of those 5 to 11, are fully vaccinated.
The overall hospitalization rate among children and teens is still lower than that of any other age group. And they account for less than 5% of average new daily hospital admissions, according to the CDC.
As of Tuesday, the average number of under-18 patients admitted to the hospital per day with COVID-19 was 766, double the figure reported just two weeks ago.
The trend among the very youngest kids is being driven by high hospitalization rates in five states: Georgia, Connecticut, Tennessee, California and Oregon, with the steepest increases in Georgia, the CDC said.
At a briefing, Walensky said the numbers include children hospitalized because of COVID-19 and those admitted for other reasons but found to be infected.
The CDC also said the surge could be partially attributable to how COVID-19 hospitalizations in this age group are defined: a positive virus test within 14 days of hospitalization for any reason.
The severity of illness among children during the omicron wave seems lower than it was with the delta variant, said Seattle Children’s Hospital critical care chief Dr. John McGuire.
Also read: UK health boss: COVID-19 rules could tighten by Christmas
“Most of the COVID+ kids in the hospital are actually not here for COVID-19 disease,” McGuire said in an email. “They are here for other issues but happen to have tested positive.”
The nation’s top infectious-disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said earlier this week that omicron appears to cause less-severe disease across the board, but that the sheer number of infections because of its extreme contagiousness will mean that many more children will get infected, and a certain share of them will wind up in the hospital.
Fauci also said many children hospitalized with COVID-19 have other health conditions that make them more susceptible to complications from the virus. That includes obesity, diabetes and lung disease.
Fauci and Walensky have emphasized that one of the best ways to protect the youngest children is to vaccinate everyone else.
The surge in hospitalizations only heightens some parents’ worries.
Emily Hojara and Eli Zilke of Sawyer, Michigan, are being extra protective of their daughter Flora, who turns 2 in May. They limit her contact with other children, and no visitors are allowed in the house unless masked, not even grandparents.
“It’s been a struggle, and now with this new variant, I feel it’s knocked us back,” Hojara said.
“It’s scary that she can’t be vaccinated,” she said of her daughter.
Dr. Jennifer Kusma, a pediatrician with Chicago’s Lurie Children’s Hospital, said she has seen increasing numbers of kids hospitalized with omicron, and while most aren’t severely ill, she understands parents’ worries.
“I really wish we already had that vaccine for these young kids,” Kusma said. But she added that what may seem like a long wait should reassure parents that vaccine testing is not being rushed.
Many had hoped the new year might bring a vaccine for young children, but Pfizer announced last month that two doses didn’t offer as much protection as hoped for in youngsters 2 to 4.
Pfizer’s study has been updated to give everyone under 5 a third dose, and data is expected in early spring.
Also on Friday, the CDC issued a report showing Pfizer shots seem to protect older children who develop a serious but rare COVID-19-linked condition that involves inflammation of multiple organs.
Among 102 kids ages 12 to 18 who were hospitalized with the condition, none who had received two Pfizer shots at least 28 days earlier needed ventilators or other advanced life support. By contrast, 40% of unvaccinated children required such treatment.
The condition, multisystem inflammatory syndrome, causes symptoms that may include persistent fever, abdominal pain and rashes. Most children recover, but 55 deaths have been reported.
A separate CDC report found that children who had COVID-19 were more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with diabetes as youngsters who had not had the virus. Scientists are investigating why but say the virus seems to attack insulin-producing cells in the pancreas.
Hasina calls for strong vigilance on forces active against Bangladesh
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Friday said all should remain alert so that no one can play with the fate of the people of Bangladesh and stop the country’s remarkable journey to economic development.
“We all have to keep up vigil so that no one can play ducks and drakes with the fate of people. Our development march forward must not be hindered in any way,” she said.
Sheikh Hasina said this while addressing the nation marking the 3rd anniversary of her current government formed following the 11th national parliamentary election held on December 30, 2018 and stepping into four years of the present Awami League government.
State-owned Bangladesh Television and Bangladesh Betar simultaneously aired the Prime Minister’s address.
Hasina formed the government for the third consecutive term on January 07, 2019 after her party Awami League’s landslide victory in the 2018 national election.
She said many people cannot tolerate it as Bangladesh is now moving fast on the development highway. “So, anti-Bangladesh and anti- independence forces, both at home and aboard, are hatching various conspiracies to stop this progress.”
In her 28-minute speech, the Prime Minister said the anti-Bangladesh and anti-liberation forces are trying to confuse people in social media with false, fabricated and imaginary, information in their efforts to misguide the development partners abroad also. “People are the source of power. We believe in the power of people. So, we’re with people,” she stated.
Corruption & Militancy
The Prime Minister said the government has taken a tough stance against corruption. “The corrupt people are not spared and won’t be spared either, no matter what their political affiliation and strength are. The Anti-Corruption Commission is discharging its duties independently in this connection. But to eradicate this disease, social awareness creation is needed,” she said.
The Prime Minister mentioned that the government has resisted the emergence of militancy with an iron hand. “Bangladesh is a country of communal harmony. The people of all religions and creeds are living here maintaining mutual tolerance and will do so in the future, too.”
Read: No one will be allowed to play with people’s fate: Hasina
Economic Progress
Hasina said Bangladesh has made marked progress in the last 13 years. “In the South Asia, Bangladesh is leading in various socioeconomic indexes, including Poverty eradication, development of the health system, reduction of the maternal and child mortality, increase in average life expectancy, women empowerment and literacy.”
She mentioned that this has been possible as people reposed trust in them. “You helped us keep up the pace of the development by giving the scope for running the country for three consecutive times. By continuing this, we’re working to build a pro-welfare, developed and prosperous Bangladesh so that Bangladesh could join the line of the developed countries by 2041. For this, you were with us and I do hope you'll be with us in the future.”
To build a potential future for the new generation, Hasina said, the government has worked out all the plans for their present and future activities.
She mentioned that the young generation is full of potential and they can remove all the darkness and hurdles, and thus they will build a progressive and secular Bangladesh, which was the dream of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. “The power of the youth can materialise the spirit of the Liberation War of Bangladesh. My strong belief is that our next generations will move forward towards the future with their heads high.”
Thousands of flights canceled, delayed at start of workweek in US
A winter storm that hit the mid-Atlantic on Monday combined with pandemic-caused shortages of airline workers to push flight cancellations to a holiday-season high, creating more frustration for travelers just trying to get home.
More than 3,000 U.S. flights and about 4,800 worldwide were canceled by late afternoon Monday on the East Coast, according to tracking service FlightAware. Another 13,000 flights were delayed, including more than 6,000 in the U.S.
Travelers could take hope from an improving weather forecast: Airlines had canceled fewer than 400 U.S. flights scheduled for Tuesday.
Also read: Snow storms and pandemic ground flights, delay holiday's end
First, however, they had to contend with a winter storm that dumped several inches of snow on the District of Columbia, northern Virginia and central Maryland before quitting Monday afternoon.
The cancellations and delays added to the despair felt over the weekend by holidays travelers trying to get home.
Jason Pevitt was stuck at the Atlanta airport for eight hours — and counting — by Monday evening, trying to get home to Virginia after spending the holidays with his family in Tampa, Florida. He was growing increasingly anxious about the risk of COVID-19 transmission in the terminal.
American Airlines canceled Pevitt's original flight to Washington’s Reagan National Airport long before a winter storm system hit the Washington area Monday. He rebooked on Delta Air Lines but got hit with more cancellations after a stopover in Atlanta — this time clearly due to the storm.
“There is just never a reason given for anything. That’s my biggest issue," said the 28-year-old, who works for an accounting company.
Many other travelers tweeted at the airlines to complain about last-minute cancellations and long delays, lost bags and hourslong hold times to reach anybody in customer service. Some said they slept in airports.
The toll of grounded flights in the U.S. was in the few hundreds per day the week before Christmas, then soared past 1,000 a day. Airlines blamed crew shortages on the spreading virus, including the highly transmissible omicron variant — new cases tripled over the past two weeks, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.
Airlines and passengers lucked out for several days with mostly favorable weather, but that changed when a winter storm hit the Midwest on Saturday and caused cancellations to spike again to new holiday-season highs.
Over the weekend, about 5,400 U.S. flights were canceled — nearly 12% of all scheduled flights — and more than 9,000 worldwide, according to FlightAware. By Monday afternoon, about 18,000 U.S. flights had been canceled since Christmas Eve.
Also read: New year brings more canceled flights for air travelers
Many of the cancellations were made hours or even a day in advance. Airline believe they have a better chance to keep lighter schedules on track, and it saves passengers from making needless trips to the airport.
More than three-quarters of Monday's scheduled flights at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and nearly half of those at nearby Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport were scrubbed, according to FlightAware. Both airports received more than six inches of snow.
Southwest Airlines had canceled about 600 flights, or 17% of Monday's schedule, by midday. Spokesman Brad Hawkins said storms over the weekend and on Monday affected operations at some of its biggest airports, including Chicago, Denver and Baltimore, and left planes and crews out of position.
United Airlines said the nationwide COVID-19 spike caused by the omicron variant has affected its flight crews, resulting in canceled flights. Delta cited winter weather and omicron, but said it expected fewer than half as many cancellations Tuesday and Wednesday. American cited the storm in the Washington area, and said the number of employees calling in sick because of COVID-19 was similar to the past few days, although it declined to give figures.
SkyWest, a regional carrier that operates flights under the names United Express, American Eagle and Delta Connection, grounded more than 350 flights Monday after scrubbing 500 on Sunday.
Thousands of miles from the snow storms, Hawaiian Airlines said it had to cancel several flights between islands and across the Pacific due to staffing shortages.
Airlines are paying temporary bonuses to encourage pilots and flight attendants to pick up flights left empty by co-workers with COVID-19. United will pay pilots triple their usual wages for picking up open flights through most of January. Spirit Airlines reached a deal with the union to pay flight attendants double through Tuesday.
How will pandemic end? Omicron clouds forecasts for endgame
Pandemics do eventually end, even if omicron is complicating the question of when this one will. But it won’t be like flipping a light switch: The world will have to learn to coexist with a virus that’s not going away.
The ultra-contagious omicron mutant is pushing cases to all-time highs and causing chaos as an exhausted world struggles, again, to stem the spread. But this time, we’re not starting from scratch.
Vaccines offer strong protection from serious illness, even if they don’t always prevent a mild infection. Omicron doesn’t appear to be as deadly as some earlier variants. And those who survive it will have some refreshed protection against other forms of the virus that still are circulating — and maybe the next mutant to emerge, too.
The newest variant is a warning about what will continue to happen “unless we really get serious about the endgame,” said Dr. Albert Ko, an infectious disease specialist at the Yale School of Public Health.
“Certainly COVID will be with us forever,” Ko added. “We’re never going to be able to eradicate or eliminate COVID, so we have to identify our goals.”
At some point, the World Health Organization will determine when enough countries have tamped down their COVID-19 cases sufficiently — or at least, hospitalizations and deaths — to declare the pandemic officially over. Exactly what that threshold will be isn’t clear.
Even when that happens, some parts of the world still will struggle — especially low-income countries that lack enough vaccines or treatments — while others more easily transition to what scientists call an “endemic” state.
They’re fuzzy distinctions, said infectious disease expert Stephen Kissler of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He defines the endemic period as reaching “some sort of acceptable steady state” to deal with COVID-19.
The omicron crisis shows we’re not there yet but “I do think we will reach a point where SARS-CoV-2 is endemic much like flu is endemic,” he said.
For comparison, COVID-19 has killed more than 800,000 Americans in two years while flu typically kills between 12,000 and 52,000 a year.
Exactly how much continuing COVID-19 illness and death the world will put up with is largely a social question, not a scientific one.
“We’re not going to get to a point where it’s 2019 again,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “We’ve got to get people to think about risk tolerance.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, is looking ahead to controlling the virus in a way “that does not disrupt society, that does not disrupt the economy.”
Already the U.S. is sending signals that it’s on the road to whatever will become the new normal. The Biden administration says there are enough tools — vaccine boosters, new treatments and masking — to handle even the omicron threat without the shutdowns of the pandemic’s earlier days. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just reduced to five days the time that people with COVID-19 must stay in isolation so they don’t sicken others, saying it’s become clear they’re most contagious early on.
READ: Women more vulnerable to Omicron than men: DGHS
India offers a glimpse of what it’s like to get to a stable level of COVID-19. Until recently, daily reported cases had remained below 10,000 for six months but only after a cost in lives “too traumatic to calculate” caused by the earlier delta variant, said Dr. T. Jacob John, former chief of virology at Christian Medical College in southern India.
Omicron now is fueling a rise in cases again, and the country in January will roll out vaccine boosters for frontline workers. But John said other endemic diseases, such as flu and measles, periodically cause outbreaks and the coronavirus will continue to flare up every so often even after omicron passes through.
Omicron is so hugely mutated that it is slipping past some of the protection of vaccinations or prior infection. But Dr. William Moss of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health expects “this virus will kind of max out” in its ability to make such big evolutionary jumps. “I don’t see this as kind of an endless cycle of new variants.”
One possible future many experts see: In the post-pandemic period, the virus causes colds for some and more serious illness for others, depending on their overall health, vaccine status and prior infections. Mutations will continue and might eventually require boosters every so often that are updated to better match new variants.
But human immune systems will continue to get better at recognizing and fighting back. Immunologist Ali Ellebedy at Washington University at St. Louis finds hope in the body’s amazing ability to remember germs it’s seen before and create multi-layer defenses.
Memory B cells are one of those layers, cells that live for years in the bone marrow, ready to swing into action and produce more antibodies when needed. But first those memory cells get trained in immune system boot camps called germinal centers, learning to do more than just make copies of their original antibodies.
In a new study, Ellebedy’s team found Pfizer vaccinations rev up “T helper cells” that act as the drill sergeant in those training camps, driving production of more diverse and stronger antibodies that may work even if the virus changes again.
Ellebedy said baseline population immunity has improved so much that even as breakthrough infections inevitably continue, there will be a drop in severe illnesses, hospitalizations and deaths — regardless of the next variant.
“We are not the same population that we were in December of 2019,” he said. “It’s different ground now.”
READ: Omicron’s New Year’s cocktail: Sorrow, fear, hope for 2022
Think of a wildfire tearing through a forest after a drought, he said. That was 2020. Now, even with omicron, “it’s not completely dry land,” but wet enough “that made the fire harder to spread.”
He foresees a day when someone gets a coronavirus infection, stays home two to three days “and then you move on. That hopefully will be the endgame.”
Snow storms and pandemic ground flights, delay holiday's end
Wintry weather combined with the pandemic to frustrate air travelers whose return flights home from the holidays were canceled or delayed in the first days of the new year.
More than 2,500 U.S. flights and more than 4,100 worldwide were grounded Sunday, according to tracking service FlightAware.
That followed Saturday's mass cancellations of more than 2,700 U.S. flights, and more than 4,700 worldwide.
“It was absolute mayhem,” said Natasha Enos, who spent a sleepless Saturday night and Sunday morning at Denver International Airport during what was supposed to be a short layover on a cross-country trip from Washington to San Francisco.
Read: New year brings more canceled flights for air travelers
Saturday's single-day U.S. toll of grounded flights was the highest since just before Christmas, when airlines began blaming staffing shortages on increasing COVID-19 infections among crews.
A winter storm that hit the Midwest on Saturday made Chicago the worst place in the country for travelers throughout the weekend. About a quarter of all flights at O’Hare Airport were canceled Sunday.
Denver's airport also faced significant disruptions. Enos, who was flying on Frontier Airlines, didn't learn that her connecting flight home to California was canceled until she had already landed in Denver. Then it was a rush to find alternative flights and navigate through baggage claims packed with stranded and confused travelers, amid concerns about the spread of the highly transmissible omicron variant of COVID-19.
“It was a lot of people in a very small space and not everybody was masking,” said the 28-year-old financial analyst. “There were a lot of exhausted kids and some families were so stressed out.”
In Michigan, the authority that runs Detroit International Airport said crews were working around the clock to remove snow and maintain the airfield. Atlanta's airport authority advised travelers to arrive earlier than usual because of high passenger volume, potential weather issues and pandemic-fueled staffing shortages that could lengthen the time it takes to get through security gates.
And thousands of miles from the closest snow storms, Hawaiian Airlines said it had to cancel several flights between islands and across the Pacific due to staffing shortages.
Southwest Airlines said it was working to help customers affected by about 400 flights canceled around the country Sunday, about 11% of its schedule. The Dallas-based airline anticipates even more operational challenges to come as the storm system pushes into the Eastern seaboard.
Delta Air Lines said Sunday it was issuing a travel waiver for planned flights this week out of mid-Atlantic airports in Baltimore and Washington in preparation for forecasted winter weather.
Read: Flight cancellations snarl holiday plans for thousands
American Airlines said most of Sunday's canceled flights had been canceled ahead of time to avoid last-minute disruptions at the airport.
SkyWest, a regional carrier that operates flights under the names American Eagle, Delta Connection and United Express, grounded nearly 500 flights Sunday, about 20% of its schedule, according to FlightAware.
Airlines have said they are taking steps to reduce cancellations caused by workers affected by the omicron variant. United is offering to pay pilots triple or more of their usual wages for picking up open flights through most of January. Spirit Airlines reached a deal with the Association of Flight Attendants for double pay for cabin crews through Tuesday, a union spokesperson said.
Airlines hope that extra pay and reduced schedules get them through the holiday crush and into the heart of January, when travel demand usually drops off. The seasonal decline could be sharper than normal this year because most business travelers are still grounded.