Some good news on the pandemic: U.S. cases have dropped by about 80% from the peak of the omicron-driven January surge. Hospitalizations are dropping as well, albeit a little more slowly.

Yet even with those improvements, the country is seeing 100,000 new COVID-19 cases a day. And sometime in the next few weeks, the country will hit an unfathomable milestone: 1 million American deaths from COVID-19.

To discuss all this and the new omicron variant, BA.2, host Lisa Mullins talks to Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, head of infectious disease at the University of Alabama, Birmingham.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.