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

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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 we near the end of summer, there seems to be more uncertainty than ever about what

the next few months of this pandemic will look like.

A summer wave of coronavirus infections in the United States that some had thought would

be declining by now continues to grow, and now levels of hospitalization and death,

while reduced by vaccines, are also climbing.

...