Hello and welcome to the Osterholm update, a podcast on COVID-19 and other infectious diseases with Dr Michael Osterholm.

Dr Ostrom is an internationally recognized medical detective and director of the Center for

Infectious Disease Research and Policy or or Sidrapp at the University of Minnesota.

In this podcast, Dr. Ostrom draws on nearly 50 years of experience investigating

infectious disease outbreaks to provide straight talk on the latest infectious disease

and public health threats.

I'm Chris Dahl, reporter for Sidrapp news,

and I'm your host for these conversations.

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

Although illnesses from COVID-19, flu, and respiratory consensual virus remain high across the nation.

The latest updates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

showed some signs of an improving situation.

The rapid increases observed in all three viruses in the run-up to the holiday season have slowed.

Hospitalizations for flu and COVID have ebbed, and emergency department visits in most age groups are down. There's still a lot of viral

activity out there and SARS-Covi2 wastewater levels still remain very high

across the nation, but the indicators are pointing in the right direction.

On this January 25th episode of the podcast, we'll provide some more detail on what's going

on as we dig into the latest data on COVID, flu, and RSV. We'll also provide an update on the JN1 sub-variant, discuss the latest

research and news on long COVID, answer an ID query about California's new COVID-19 isolation policies, examine the roots of some of the measles

outbreaks we're seeing around the country, and look at efforts to define viruses with

pandemic potential. We're also bringing the latest installment of this week in public health history.

But before we get started, we'll begin with Dr. Ostrom's opening comments and dedication.

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