Hi, I just hiked three and a half blurious and exhausting hours through the

Bernese Alps with my dad. And we are now sitting down for Switzerland's tastiest

and most remote plate of Rochty at the Rocks.Huta. This podcast was recorded at

204 pm on Tuesday, April 12. Things may have changed by the time you hear this,

but no matter how many more hours we hike, we'll still be digesting the best Swiss mountain foods.

Potatoes, cheese, and beer. Okay, here's the show.

Sign me up for that. I know. That sounds like a great trip. All these people out there like

living their life. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Do it. Drink that beer. Hey there, it's the

NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And I'm a Smakhol and I cover the

White House. And today we've got Salina Simmons-Duffin from NPR's health team here with us. Hey,

Salina. Hi, Sue and Asma. How are you? We're good. We're so happy to have you on because

I'm happy to be here. COVID. Front of mind in Washington, D.C. again. Speaker of the house,

the attorney general, even the vice president's husband Doug M. Hoff have all recently tested positive.

It feels like it's all over the place in the city right now. Cases are also on the rise in certain

pockets of the country, specifically the Northeast is seeing numbers go up. Just yesterday,

Philadelphia became the first major city to re-instate its indoor mask mandate.

But as we've talked about a lot, the country has largely moved on. Day-to-day life is back to normal

in America. So Salina, put some perspective on this. What is the state of the pandemic in the country

right now? Well, things are looking a lot better than they were recently in the, you know, at the

height of the Omicron wave. Cases were just like skyrocketing, hospitalizations deaths. Everything

was looking pretty bad. Now things are looking a little better. So across the country, there's been

a little bit of an uptick in cases that seems to be pretty isolated. It's not blanketing the

...