Across the country, hospitalizations for COVID-19 have risen to their highest levels since March. This rise in cases is being driven by the new BA.5 variant, which now accounts for around 65 percent of all COVID infections in the U.S. To help us understand this stage of the pandemic, we speak with Dr. Celine Gounder, Senior Fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine and a former member of the Biden-Harris Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board.