Despite health warnings, holiday travel has already set records with millions getting away in the days before Christmas.

Holiday songs blared from speakers at MacArthur Airport Wednesday, creating a festive spirit as travelers made their way to see relatives and friends for Christmas and New Year's. And the crowds at airports have only grown.

The TSA says on Tuesday, 992,000 people made their way through checkpoints. That's down from the usual 1.9 million, but still the highest numbers we've seen in in the pandemic. Roadways have been crowded as well.

Infectious disease doctors say people should be cautious, no matter what your mode of transportation is.

"The more people you basically meet, the higher your chances that one of them is this asymptomatic super-spreaders, and boom, you are infected," says Dr. Bettina Fries, of Stony Brook Medicine.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo repeated his message to "celebrate smart" over the coming days. He also said Thanksgiving didn't lead to a spike in cases like he feared.

"But then you see a spike that happened in other parts of the country on Thanksgiving and coming out of Thanksgiving," says Cuomo. "Those parts of the country had more travel at Thanksgiving than we did."

Cuomo says New York's additional levels of caution helped avoid a large spike, but he remained cautious about the coming holidays and a rise in numbers that could come.