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Due to the pandemic, global poverty rates are rising for the first time in two decades.

In response, Give Directly has delivered contactless cash payments to over a half million

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These countries are currently facing their highest COVID infection rates yet, and only

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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.

As the calendar turns to August, the summer that most Americans were anticipating just a

few months ago has taken a decided turn for the worse, with COVID-19 cases fueled by the

highly transmissible Delta variant climbing back to level seen last summer.

On top of that, a CDC report that came out last week is prompting new questions about

breakthrough infections in the fully vaccinated.

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