Biden to pledge 500M free COVID-19 tests to counter omicron

WASHINGTON (AP) — With the omicron variant on the march, President Joe Biden plans to announce 500 million free rapid tests for Americans, increased support for hospitals under strain and a redoubling of vaccination and boosting efforts.

In a speech scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, Biden is detailing major changes to his COVID-19 winter plan, his hand forced by the arrival of the fast-spreading variant, whose properties are yet not fully understood by scientists.

The world is confronting the prospect of a second straight holiday season with COVID-19 as families and friends begin to gather. Scientists don't yet know whether omicron causes more serious disease, but they do know that vaccination should offer strong protections against severe illness and death.

The White House provided details on the proposals Biden will announce in his speech.

A cornerstone of the plan is Biden's decision for the government to purchase 500 million coronavirus rapid tests and ship them free to Americans starting in January.

People will use a new website to order their tests, which will then be sent to them by US mail at no charge, the White House said.

It marks a major shift for Biden, who earlier had called for many Americans to purchase the hard-to-find tests on their own and then seek reimbursement from their health insurance.

For the first time, the US government will send free COVID-19 tests directly to Americans, after more than a year of urging by public health experts.

Experts had criticised Biden's initial buy-first, get-paid-later approach as unwieldy and warned that the US would face another round of problems with testing at a critical time.

Testing advocates point to countries like the UK and Germany, which have distributed billions of tests to the public and recommend people test themselves twice a week.

The federal government will also establish new testing sites and use the Defense Production Act to help manufacture more tests. The first new federally supported testing site will open in New York this week.

The new testing sites will add to 20,000 already available. White House officials said they're working with Google so that people will be able to find them by searching “free COVID test near me.”

Still, Biden's testing surge would fall far short of the levels needed for all Americans to test at the recommended rate of twice weekly.

The US would need 2.3 billion tests per month for everyone 12 and older to do that, according to the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. That's nearly five times more than the half-billion tests Biden will deploy.

Currently, the US can conduct about 600 million tests per month, with home tests accounting for about half, according to researchers from Arizona State University.

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