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.

Last Friday, March 11th marked two years since World Health Organization Director General

Tedros Adnan Gabrazius first described COVID-19 as a pandemic.

In last week, in a speech reflecting on the past two years in the future, Tedros said that

despite the positive global trends we've seen in recent weeks, the term still applies.

Although reported cases and deaths are declining globally, in several countries have listed

restrictions, the pandemic is far from over, and it will not be over anywhere until it's

over everywhere, he said.

A stark reminder of the pandemic not being over can be seen right now in places like China,

Hong Kong, and South Korea, where cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are higher than they've

been at any point during this pandemic.

It can also be seen in some European countries, where health officials are keeping a wary

eye on rising case numbers and hospitalizations that at this point aren't easily explained.

And the WHO this week reported its first increase in global cases since the end of January.

Today, on this March 17th episode of the podcast, we're going to talk about what's going

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