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.

Once again, the US appears to be an period of uncertainty in this pandemic, a feeling that

by now has become quite familiar.

Clearly, the country is in a far better position than it was just two months ago when we were

averaging more than 740,000 COVID-19 cases a day.

But with cases rising in Europe and the BA2 sub variant now accounting for more than the

third of new US cases, it appears an uptick in infections is likely.

What is uncertain is what the uptick will look like.

Will it be a small increase or a new surge?

And are we prepared to handle a new surge when so many people and policymakers are done

with the pandemic?

In mitigation efforts are unlikely to return.

That will be our focus today on this March 24th episode of the podcast, as we assess

the state of the COVID-19 pandemic here in the US and around the world.

We'll also get an update on the discussions around the potential fourth dose of COVID-19

...