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 Ostrom Update Podcast.

As we move into the final weeks of the summer,

the latest summer surge of COVID-19 is showing no signs of slowing down.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most areas of the country are seeing consistent increases in COVID markers,

such as emergency department visits and hospitalizations, and

wastewater levels continue to trend upward.

And yet last week, we received yet another reminder that COVID isn't the only infectious disease threat that we need to pay attention to,

when the World Health Organization declared a second public health emergency for M-POCs.

Also vying for our attention is the ongoing outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza, which continues to spread in US dairy

cattle.

And in a recent essay published in Foreign Affairs, Dr Osterum warned that the United States and other countries will not be able

to get ahead of the next pandemic, whatever it may be caused by, if they don't start devoting the necessary

resources developing better vaccines, treatments, and other countermeasures immediately.

Although such efforts will be costly, failing to take these steps could be catastrophic.

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