President Joe Biden acknowledged the shortage of at- home COVID-19 tests and said that his administration could be doing more to provide testing to Americans.
In a call with the National Governor's Association, Biden broke down where the country stands in terms of at- home COVID-19 tests and the Omicron variant.
"We went from no over-the-counter tests in January to almost 200 million in December," Biden said. It's not enough. It's not enough. If we had known, we would have gone quicker.
The Defense Production Act will be used to make more tests, according to Biden, who said his administration has purchased 500,000 more at- home tests.
Biden said that seeing how tough it was for some people to take a test this weekend shows that there is more work to be done.
In-person testing has increased under his administration.
There are more than 20,000 places where you can get tested for free after we doubled the number of pharmacy that offered free tests.
FEMA has been ordered to open pop-up testing sites in busy areas like New York City, and private insurance will reimburse users for at- home COVID-19 tests, or will provide free testing for those without insurance.
The Omicron variant is accounting for more than 70% of the COVID-19 cases.
