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US President Joe Biden announced new plans to fight the spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant of the coronavirus. He said the government would make 500 million rapid at-home tests freely available to Americans, increase support for hospitals, and add testing sites in regions that need additional capacity. Biden said that it will start in January and all Americans can request rapid tests through a website and they will get free of cost. The timing of when those tests will arrive on doorsteps and how they will be delivered was not disclosed. Moreover, the Biden administration will deploy 1,000 members of the military to help staff medical facilities caring for COVID-19 patients. There are also plans to send out additional ventilators and equipment from the national stockpile besides expanding hospital capacity to handle infected patients.

Biden issued a statement in his speech at the White House and said the government will establish new testing sites and use the Defense Production Act to help manufacture more tests. There will also be pop-up vaccination sites, hundreds of new people to administer the vaccines and new rules that make it easier for pharmacists to work across state lines. President Biden said the current shortage of at-home tests in places across the country where the virus is surging should not be considered a failure, since he didn’t think anyone anticipated the new variant would spread so quickly. Biden said, “No, it’s not, because COVID is spreading so rapidly, you notice it just happened almost overnight, just in the last month”. He was asked if it’s a failure that the US doesn’t have enough tests for everyone who wants one to get one.

The President said, “So no, it’s not a failure. The alarm bell went off. I don’t think anybody anticipated that this was going to be as rapidly spreading as it did”. The president appealed directly to the unvaccinated, telling them that they have a duty to their country to get their shots. Biden gave a nod to the Trump administration, saying that thanks to the previous administration and the scientific community that the US was one of the first countries to distribute vaccines. He also encouraged Americans to not be shocked by positive cases of the Omicron variant among the vaccinated. President Biden said, “There will be positive cases in every office, even in the White House, among the vaccinated, from Omicron. But these cases are highly unlikely to lead to a serious illness”.