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've spent a lot of time over the past two years talking about the patterns of peaks

and valleys established by the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its numerous variants.

And if you're a regular listener, you're quite familiar with these patterns.

But we seem to be in a place right now where what happens next and whether those patterns

will continue is an open question.

In the US, we've been expecting to see a nationwide increase in new COVID-19 cases driven

by the BA-2 variant, but it is yet to develop and what it will look like is unclear.

And with testing and surveillance declining in the US and many other countries as people

and policymakers move on from the pandemic, we may have less insight into what is actually

happening, much less what comes next.

That will be the focus of our discussion here today on this April 7th 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 answer a COVID query about the spread of avian influenza and share the latest

beautiful place submission from our listeners.

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