President Joe Biden says that the shortage of COVID-19 tests is “not” a failure because of how quickly the new number of new infections increased.
During an event at the White House on Tuesday, a reporter noted, “Public health officials have been saying for months you need to surge rapid tests for just this moment.”
He asked, “Is it a failure that you don’t have an adequate amount of tests for everyone to be able to get one if they need one right now?”
“No, it’s not because Covid is spreading so rapidly, if you’ve noticed. It just happened almost overnight, just in the last month,” Biden responded. “But the alarm bell went off. I don’t think anybody anticipated that this was going to be as rapidly spreading as it did.”
He continued, “All of a sudden, it was like everybody rushed to the counter. It was a big, big rush.”
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Biden announced plans to purchase 500 million at-home coronavirus tests and distribute them to Americans. Those tests will begin to be available in January.
The plan comes as officials fear that there could be a massive surge of new cases as omicron has quickly become the dominant strain in the country. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed on Monday that the omicron variant made up 73% of new cases over the last week.
As the holiday season drew near, the CDC urged Americans to use at-home tests before gatherings to help prevent the spread of the virus. However, Americans are now finding that it is difficult to find the tests online or in pharmacies.
In Washington, D.C. and New York City, there have been reports of people experiencing hours-long lines at testing locations in order to get tested for the virus.
