than just our travel experience. peruvian authorities confirmed the cusco airport has reopened. this is good news for people trying to connect a connecting flight to lima. to give you an idea how popular peru is as an international destination, 500,000 foreign tourists visited the country in the first five months of the year according to government figures. rafael romo. thank you. still ahead, as covid cases rise, officials are urging people to protect themselves as we close in on christmas and new year s eve. the concerns amid this trip-threat of respiratory diseases. plus, russia launching a barrage of attacks on ukraine, hitting critical infrastructure targets. we ll take you live to ukraine with a look at the extensive damage and the recovery effort underway. don t settle for silver. harness the power of 7 moisturizers & 3 vitamins
the biggest threat to your holiday celebrations. we re talking about these throw viruses that are rapidly spreading across the country. covid, the flu, and the respiratory illness known as rsv. the cdc just reported flu activity is still high despite some areas seeing declines. so, so far this season, we ve seen 15 million infections, 150,000 hospitalizations, and over 9,000 deaths tied to the flu. fouurther compounding the problem, rsv has been raging and covid may be on the verge of a winter comeback. dr. fauci underscored how crucial vaccines are in this triple threat. it doesn t have to the new normal for the simple reason that we have good countermeasures for two out of those three, and the three you are referring to is covid, influenza and respiratory
deaths. how concerning are those numbers for you? how do they compare to years past? well, we ve certainly got three viruses out there firing their guns, as it were, simultaneously. flu is out in fierce in my part of the country. it is still increasing. so we have a lot of influenza. rsv, that other virus, has come and in some places it s plateauing and going down, but there is still a lot of it out and we are just talking about covid. smoldering along. in some places, kicking up. so this looks to be a very early and fierce winter season. we hope they all come down, but we have to prepare ourselves, and vaccination, covid vaccine, flu vaccine, if you haven t been vaccinated, please, don t linger. you have got plenty of time today to get both of those vaccines. the best gift that you can give
surging at once. rsv looks like it has clearly peaked and on its way down, probably the worst flu outbreak in a decade, and we talked about covid, clearly it s on an up swing with increasing number of cases. to combat covid, the white house is restarting its program to make available four free at-home covid rapid tests per household. more free tests will be sent to schools, community health centers and rural health clinics, the government increasing access to vaccines with mobile and pop up vaccination sites. major cities like l.a. and new york are recommending people once again wear masks indoors, all of it comes after president biden declared three months ago that the pandemic was over. how has that complicated the messaging to keep americans vigilant facing covid. the president was clear that covid is not over. we see people getting infected and sick. americans needlessly dying of covid. white house officials bracing for cases to surge further in january after americans ga
models to be able to take care of patients with long covid. . if you have long covid, you re largely piecing it together. the notion that we could try to prevent this, we should try to learn from the cdc report should be able to get congress to fund some of the long covid efforts. doctor, thank you so much. always good to see you. we have an nbc news exclusive now. a house intelligence committee report that found u.s. spy agencies were warning early on about the impending pandemic. but those warnings were missed presenting a lost opportunity to better understand the disease because they failed to start spying on chinese health officials who are by the way were lying. the report also said there stul needs to be, quote, fundamental changes for the next pandemic you want to bring in en dilanian, who has this exclusive report. this finding is completely different than what then president trump claimed that