This month, CIDRAP is commemorating its 20th anniversary.

Since we first opened our doors, our team is created with now a globally renowned center, tackling the world's toughest challenges in infectious disease and public policy.

In celebration of the Smilestone anniversary, a generous CIDRAP supporter has offered a transformational matching gift to support our efforts and ensure we're able to continue our important work into the future.

For a limited time, your gift will be matched at 50%, helping to build a solid endowment to support CIDRAP's work.

Please visit cidrap.umn.edu-thord-donate.

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 CIDRAP, 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 CIDRAP News, and I'm your host for these conversations.

Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Ostrome Update Podcast.

If your head is spinning from all the recent news about COVID-19 booster shots, you're not alone.

Between the pronouncements of the Biden administration, the deliberations of the FDA and CDC advisory boards, and the final recommendations from those two agencies,

figuring out who exactly is eligible for booster shots, who isn't, and why they're needed, requires an advanced degree, and even then, it's still confusing.

This week on the podcast, we're going to try to clarify some of the confusion around the booster shots recommendations, after we review the state of the pandemic around the globe and here in the United States.

We'll also answer a listener question about booster shots, and continue our look at how the Delta variant is affecting children in schools.

And we'll hear about the latest beautiful place submission from one of our listeners.

But first, as always, we'll begin with Dr. Ostrome's opening comments and dedication.

Thank you, Chris, and welcome to all of you back to another weekly episode of our podcast.

On behalf of the entire podcast team, I want to thank you for your continued listening and support of our efforts.

As I've said many times on this podcast, we very much appreciate the feedback we get from you.

And as you know, we read every letter, a card note that comes into us.

And while we can't respond to all of them, we take that information to heart and try to provide you with what you're asking for and what you need.

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