Hello and welcome to the Ostrome Update COVID-19, a podcast on the COVID-19 pandemic with

Dr. Michael Ostrome.

Dr. Ostrome is an internationally recognized medical detective and director of the Center

for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, or CITRAP, at the University of Minnesota.

In this podcast, Dr. Ostrome will draw on more than 45 years of experience investigating

infectious disease outbreaks to provide straight talk on the COVID-19 pandemic.

I'm Chris Dahl, reporter for CITRAP News, and I'm your host for these conversations.

Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Ostrome Update Podcast.

As I often like to do in preparation for an episode, I took a look back this week at

an old podcast script to remind myself of where we've been in this pandemic and how

quickly things can change.

On August 19th, 2021, little more than a month after the White House had essentially declared

victory over COVID-19, we were in the midst of the Delta Surge, and new infections, hospitalizations,

and deaths were rising across the country.

All of a sudden, it seemed like the SARS-CoV-2 virus had changed the game, and we hadn't

even heard of Omicron yet.

It was a good reminder here in our third summer with COVID, because even though the virus

has faded into the background for many, it has shown us several times that it has many

tricks up its sleeve.

Will the BA-5 Omicron variant be the last one?

Today, on this August 18th episode of the podcast, we're going to talk about the trajectory

of BA-5 here in the US and around the world, and what it tells us about our future with

...