More people have passed through U.S. airport security checkpoints in the past six days than at any other point since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, giving some much needed optimism to one of the most pandemic-impacted industries on its road to recovery.

At least 1 million travelers were screened by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in the six consecutive days ending Wednesday, with airline passengers topping 1.35 million last Friday in the highest one-day total since March 15, 2020.

While passenger screenings are still roughly half of those seen in 2019, March appears to be gearing up to be a comeback month for the airline industry. The latest data comes only about a year after the industry saw passenger volumes plunge significantly in response to the emerging coronavirus outbreak, causing airlines both big and small to request billions in stimulus from the federal government.

Yet, this increase in airline passengers comes as many health experts are warning against unnecessary travel as the United States continues to work to contain its ongoing coronavirus outbreak amid threats of new, highly transmissible variant strains.

"With the coming warmer weather, I know it's tempting to want to relax and to let our guard down, particularly after a hard winter that sadly saw the highest level of cases and deaths during the pandemic so far," Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (C.D.C.), stated during a press briefing on Monday. "We have seen footage of people enjoying spring break festivities maskless. This is all in the context of still 50,000 cases per day."

Cases climbed last spring. They climbed again in the summer. They will climb now if we stop taking precautions when continue to get more and more people vaccinated," Walensky continueds. "We are just starting to turn the corner. The data are moving in the right direction, but where this goes is dependent on whether we all do what must be done to protect ourselves and others."

Currently, the U.S. is averaging about 54,000 daily new infections in the past seven days, according to C.D.C. data, far below its over 300,000 peak back in January. These lower infection trends are coming alongside an accelerating national vaccination effort, which has fully inoculated almost 40 million Americans or about 12% of the population.