Hello and welcome to the Osterhome Update, COVID-19, a weekly podcast on the global COVID-19

pandemic with Dr. Michael Osterhome, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research

and Policy, or CIDRAP at the University of Minnesota.

Dr. Osterhome is an internationally recognized medical detective with more than 45 years

of experience investigating and researching infectious disease outbreaks.

It's 2017 book Deadliest Enemy, born to a scenario very similar to what we are experiencing

now with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Each episode of the podcast, Dr. Osterhome will be discussing the latest COVID-19 news,

data, guidance, and perspective.

I'm Chris Doll, reporter for CIDRAP News, and I'm your host for these conversations.

Mike, what is your assessment of the current trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic?

Starting with the US, whereas of Monday, there are more than 160,000 cases in nearly 3,000 deaths.

Thank you, Chris. It's good to be with you again.

The assessment of the current trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic can be defined in one

word, dynamic.

We had projected that once it, in a sense, made landfall in the United States, that it would

take several weeks, if not a month, of transmission in certain locations, most notably metropolitan

areas, with substantial international travel, to introduce the virus into that population.

And then, quietly, if we're lack of a better term, spread within that community.

This is exactly what happened in Wuhan between what is likely a jump from an animal to a human

in mid-November of last year, and then the recognition of cases in the end of December.

Remember that we talk about a generation time, or the time from ones being exposed to the

...