Local health officials have consistently cautioned D.C.-area residents to take extra precautions when celebrating Thanksgiving in the middle of a pandemic.

So we wondered—how are those who are on the frontlines of combating the coronavirus and informing the public about good safety habits adjusting their own plans for the holiday?

DCist/WAMU spoke to several prominent local doctors recently to get a sense of what they’ll miss about their traditional holiday plans and what they’ll be doing instead. This was before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged people Thursday not to travel for the holiday. Even then, the medical professionals were planning on a smaller celebrations.

They also provided some words of wisdom to those who may be disappointed about a social-distanced Thanksgiving.

Responses from the health experts have been edited for brevity and length.

Dr. Ernest Carter, director of the Prince George’s County Health Department:

In a normal year, my children come down from wherever they are at the time— currently my oldest daughter is in New York and my youngest daughter is in Boston— and we have family Thanksgiving. This year is not going to be that way. And so my girls are sad, but they had to understand we’re in a different time.

You just can’t predict, even with a mask on, how [the virus] will affect people. And I don’t want my children to be exposed to it, but I also don’t want them to expose others. Quite frankly, they could expose us and we’re not out of the at risk category. So we are planning to do it all virtually. My wife and I are going to be at home and we’re going to turn on the Zoom and and still enjoy each other’s company all day long.

Thanksgiving is about love, and you know, whether I see my daughters on Zoom or I’m hugging and kissing them, the love hasn’t changed a bit. So when we collectively get together and we share the moment and the blessings that we have, that love helps lift us up — every last one of us. So I don’t want anybody to be depressed this Thanksgiving.

We’re going to have a time when we can get back and we can do the hugs and kisses and everything else. And I’ll tell you right now, I’ll be the first one to do it, because I love kissing my daughters and seeing them. That’s coming. But that doesn’t diminish all of the love we have to give to each other.

Dr. Gloria Addo-Ayensu, director of the Fairfax County Health Department:

I typically travel to Ghana during the holiday to visit my extended family and childhood friends. I get to sleep in the room that I slept in when I was a child because I lived with my mom. But, given the resurgence in coronavirus cases across the nation and the continued increase in our community, I’m going to actually practice what I preach and stay home this holiday season and celebrate with the members of my current household. It’s just two of us in the household right now.

I started using FaceTime this year for the first time. I’m not very techie, but you know, in these times, we have to find new ways of keeping in touch.

Thanksgiving for me is a combination of Ghanaian dishes that I love, as well as pecan pie, which I learned to make myself in medical school in New Orleans. I don’t even know if I’ll do all of that, I’m just kind of exhausted this year working long hours. So I’ll keep it simple.

I’m just thankful to be alive. I’m just thankful that everyone in my family is alive and is doing well.

Dr. Travis Gayles, Montgomery County Health Officer:

For the last couple of years, we’ve tried to get together as a larger group. Everybody lives in Virginia and North Carolina. But this year it’s caused us to question if we’ll be able to do that, because all of our parents are older and they fall into that higher risk category based upon their age.

So we’re still trying to decide what we’re going to do at this point. We’ve thrown out a couple of different ideas if we do get together— which is becoming less likely as the cases are increasing— that we would recommend and implement a kind of a testing and bubble strategy where we’d require everybody to get tested at a minimum a week out from getting together. And then between that time and the actual date of the holiday, we’d be asking everybody to quarantine and significantly minimize outside of going to work, minimize their exposure to other people that could potentially in the space of when they have their test, potentially come into contact with someone who’s positive

My last living grandparents passed away last year. And as I get older, I appreciate and value being able to get together with family in holiday settings and celebratory settings as opposed to the only time, you know, you get to see them at a funeral or if someone’s sick. So I miss those opportunities, being able to get together and celebrate together and be in each other’s space, both in terms of the emotional connection and just the physical proximity.

I’ll certainly miss the food. My mom is an excellent cook. Her specialty is corn pudding. I have no idea how to make it. I probably should learn how to make it. Growing up in the South, you have a very traditional southern Thanksgiving with ham, turkey, chicken, collard greens, green beans, sweet potatoes, macaroni and cheese. So it’s a spread of food that I don’t eat on a regular basis that I allow myself to indulge on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I would encourage folks to think outside the box and be creative about how to still connect and the absence of the physical sense. You know, there are lots of great virtual tools that allow us to connect, whether it’s Zoom or WhatsApp or FaceTime that allow us to still be connected, even if we’re not physically there.

I think it’s important to emphasize that, again, the reason why these precautions are put into place is because we haven’t passed the hump.

Dr. Leana Wen, visiting professor of health policy and management at George Washington University:

We’re planning to see our very close friends outdoors only with the understanding that it could be rescheduled. It will be rescheduled depending on the weather, if it’s too cold that day, if it’s raining, snowing, etc., we will not get together outdoors on Thanksgiving. We could get together the day before or the day after, the weekend before or or or after. And because our families live so far away and we’ve decided that this year we are not going to travel to see them and vice versa.

My father lives in Vancouver. My sister lives in Seattle. My husband’s family lives in Johannesburg, South Africa. It’s just not practical for us to see one another. My sister is visiting us now, and she followed the exact same protocols that I recommend in terms of the quarantine for 40 days and testing. She’s staying with us for months.

I do think that if you are able to see relatives, if you have to travel to see them, it’s better to take one long trip instead of several short trips. That way it makes the quarantining period worth it. I personally would feel comfortable getting on a plane. I would make sure that the airline is one that follows masking precautions and symptom checking. I’m actually much less concerned about the travel itself than what people do before and after they travel.

My husband and I routinely host another family or two over at our house for drinks, snacks, for lunch, or brunch. We host them outdoors with the seats of different households sitting like 10 feet away from one another. There’s a big table in the middle where we set all the glasses and then everybody picks up their drinks one at a time then brings them back to their seats. If we have food, we plate the food then people are bringing their food back one at a time. Nobody is anywhere close to six feet of one another. So that’s the safest way of doing this and I would highly recommend that people do this if they’re able to, because it very much reduces the isolation that comes with these times that we are in now.

We have a new baby. It’s not exactly something that’s new or it’s something that’s a tradition over time, but rather we have a baby who is almost seven months old, who has not met her grandparents. We are all very sad about this, but we would feel so much worse if people came to visit us and then got ill, and perhaps even died, as a result of something that we could have held off for another year.

Dr. Nilesh Kalyanaraman, Anne Arundel County Health Officer:

Typically our plans are that my family and I would travel up to my parents house in New York and my sister and her family would rejoin us there as well. It was nice when we went to our parents house and it was kind of a throwback, something we’ve been doing for decades at this point, and that’s just not going to happen this time, so it’ll just feel different.

So we’re looking at— if we’re going to have Thanksgiving— a smaller one than we used to have. We won’t be gathering and my wife and kids are celebrating on our own.

Part of it is focusing on what we can have and how we can in this really challenging time, try to celebrate what we can have. And hopefully those of us who are here can celebrate our life. The pandemic has taken a toll on many families, and so looking at the positives always helps me.