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Hello and welcome to the Oster Home Update, COVID-19, a weekly podcast on the COVID-19

pandemic with Dr. Michael Oster Home. Dr. Oster Home 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. Oster Home 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 Doll, reporter for CITRAP News. I'm your host

for these conversations.

Each week here on the Oster Home Update, we try to answer one or two email questions we

receive from our listeners about various aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is just a fraction

of the queries we receive, and we often wish we had more time to address the great questions

that our listeners send to us. So for this April 29th episode, we've decided to do a special

mail bag edition on the Oster Home Update. Where Dr. Oster Home will do his best to answer

several of your questions. We'll dip into the mail bag after we get an update on the

current state of the pandemic and where it's headed in the United States and the rest of

the world, and discuss the latest developments in the vaccine rollout. We'll also highlight

the latest act of kindness from one of our listeners. But first, as always, we'll begin with

Dr. Oster Home's opening comments and dedication.

Thank you, Chris, and welcome everyone to this week's edition of the podcast. As I say,

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