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.

It's been three weeks since I last hosted an episode of the podcast, and what a difference

three weeks can make.

Back in early July, the 70th average of New Daily COVID-19 infections was around 12,000.

It was clear at the time that the highly transmissible Delta variant posed a threat, especially

to communities with a large proportion of unvaccinated people.

The United States appeared to have put the worst days of the pandemic behind it.

Now, the Delta variant has taken over, and we're averaging around 63,000 new cases a day.

The vaccination effort has slowed to a crawl, and vaccine resistance is hardening.

And while hospitalizations remain low nationwide compared with previous surges, they are climbing

with some parts of the country seeing substantial increases.

The surge in new cases has led cities around the country to reimpose mask mandates, prompted

new mask guidance from federal officials, and led many vaccinated individuals to question

the feeling of safety they had just a few weeks ago.

This week on the Ostrome Update, as we resume our weekly episodes, we're going to focus

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