here are the top stories we re covering this hour. israel says its war effort to eliminate hamas is entering a new phase with the new year. but is it going to reduce civilian casualties as the question has been questioning. this as prime minister netanyahu suffers a major political setback from his country s supreme court. i ll teak to ambassador mark regev and the democratic senator. and in tokyo, a five-man crew of air national guard claimed dead but all 400 on board a wide-body passenger plane escaping safely in just minutes after their plane exploded on the runway. and we ll look at the surge of respiratory illnesses over the holiday season. as flu, covid and rsv give families a rough start to 2024. and good day, everyone. i m andrea mitchell in washington. israel is starting the new year by launching intense attacks against central and southern gaza, even as the idf begins the process, it says, of bringing the first several thousand of its troops home. that includ
The holiday season over, the cdc says dozens of states reporting increasing numbers of respiratory illnesses. cases of the flu, rsv, covid, the common cold, all on the rise. sending thousands of people to hospitals across the country. and with vaccination numbers waning, experts say the situation could get even worse. nbc news correspondent blayne alexander joins us from atlanta. what are the cdc numbers showing and what are doctors telling you? reporter: so, andrea, you started talking about the vaccination numbers. i want to begin there. right now they re low. officials warn they were low. the cdc put out a rare message to doctors in december, basically saying urge your at risk patients or high risk patients to get the shot. so when you look at the covid boost, 18% of adults have had that shot. the flu shot is less than 50%, it is down from last year. so, when you combine that with the fact that we typically see a rise in respiratory illnesses
Omicron has many more mutations than previous variants of concern, a fact that raises questions about how effective existing vaccines will be against the new form of the coronavirus.
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The last couple of hours has been meeting with austin and the joint chiefs chairman milley ahead of that briefing that they will hold later today. we expect to hear from the president and he s to speak this afternoon. the covid boost, and that would give some updates as it relate to afghanistan afg and that is a huge challenge and they do it with political rid out, and there are leading democrats on the house foreign affairs committee, the senate foreign relations committee. the senate side want to have a full accounting according to bob menendez, the democrat. they want to hear from the secretary of defense and the secretary of state tony blinken. on the house side they ve been saying effectively that this is disappointing and concerning. there s a lot of tough language being directed this way and also new information as it relates to our reporting over the last