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.

We're now more than two months into the Delta variant fueled wave of COVID-19 cases in

the United States.

And the peak in decline that we've been waiting for remains elusive.

The forest fire that began in the southern Sun Belt states is now moving on to unvaccinated

populations in other parts of the country.

And while hospitals and ICU's remain full across the South, healthcare facilities and other

regions are now starting to buckle.

Although deaths aren't as high as they were in the winter, the death toll from this latest

surge, eight months after vaccines were introduced, is staggering.

The current state of the pandemic in the US and the toll this latest wave is taking on

the unvaccinated across the country, prompted President Joe Biden last week to announce

new measures aimed at boosting vaccination and testing as the nation heads into the

fall and winter.

But will those measures help us get where we want to be?

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