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.

At a media briefing last week, World Health Organization director General Tedros Adanam

Gabrasius said COVID-19 cases have declined by 23% over the past month, while reported

deaths from COVID-19 have declined 95% since the beginning of the year.

Still, Tedros noted that some parts of the world are seeing an increase in cases.

The emergence of the XBB-1.16 variant shows the virus is still changing, and an estimated

one in 10 infections results in long COVID, suggesting that perhaps hundreds of millions

will need long-term care.

We remain hopeful that sometime this year, we will be able to declare an end to COVID-19

as a public health emergency of international concern.

Tedros said, but this virus is here to stay, and all countries will need to learn to

manage it alongside other infectious diseases.

The WHO will in fact meet later today to assess if the current situation still warrants the

global public health emergency, and as we discussed on our last episode, the public health

emergency in the United States will end on May 11th.

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