According to Vanity Fair, the plan to send over 700 million rapid COVID-19 at- home tests to Americans was turned down by the administration of President Joe Biden.
According to the report, public health experts from the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, the COVID Collaborative, and the Rockefeller Foundation presented the 10-page plan on a call with White House officials. The plan called for a "Testing Surge" to prevent the holiday surge.
According to Vanity Fair, the experts told the White House that it would take at least 732 million rapid at- home COVID-19 antigen tests to be sent to American citizens before the holiday season.
Biden's official who was present for the presentation told Vanity Fair that the FDA approval processes made it impossible to make over-the-counter tests at that scale.
Biden officials told Vanity Fair that the plan was rejected because only a few at- home tests had been approved by the FDA, and none of the companies could increase their capacity to match the proposed manufacturing demands.
The FDA approval process for other rapid at- home tests was fast-tracked by the Biden administration.
The Omicron variant is a highly infectious variant and the Biden administration is scaling up testing to detect it.
Biden said in a speech on Monday that 500 million free at- home COVID test kits would be given to Americans affected by the Omicron variant surge.
President Biden told ABC News that he wished he had thought about ordering the 500 million tests two months ago.
The Washington Post reported on Friday that the Biden administration abandoned a focus on mass testing and instead focused on ramping up vaccinations.
The officials told The Post that there was more doubt about the accuracy of rapid antigen tests at the time.
The White House was reached out to by an Insider.
