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.

It's mid-July and the United States and the rest of the world are now well into the latest

chapter of the age of the variants, with the highly transmissible and immunivasive BA-5

home-recon sub variant, driving a surge in new COVID-19 cases.

With this surge, we're also starting to see an increase in hospitalizations and deaths,

and COVID-19 reinfections appear at least anecdotally to becoming more common.

While this surge has prompted public health officials to urge people to get their COVID-19

booster shots and wear masks and crowded indoor places, for the most part, the surge is

being met with a collective shrug by the public.

Today, on this July 21st episode of the podcast, we're going to talk about the BA-5 surge,

the response, and what the next chapter in the age of the variants might look like.

Will BA-2.75 be that next chapter?

We'll also talk about the BA-5 sub variant's ability to cause reinfections.

Answer a listener question on how long people should remain isolated after infection, give

you the latest on the monkeypox outbreak, and share a beautiful place from one of our listeners.

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