President Joe Biden will announce on Tuesday that the government has bought half a billion at-home rapid Covid-19 tests and plans to give them away for free to Americans who request them through a website. This is one of a number of new steps he’ll take as the country faces a potentially crippling surge of infections in the winter. New tests will be available next month, and they will be sent to people in the mail. The administration is still trying to figure out how many tests each household can ask for. The president said on Tuesday that deliveries won’t start until January, and that won’t happen until then.
They said the first deliveries of the tests will happen in January, and the website will also be up and running “in January or around January.” The official also said the White House is “working through all the details” when asked how people who don’t have internet could take tests. One of the President’s new ideas is to get 1,000 military service members ready to go to overcrowded hospitals across the country in January and February. “God willing,” an official said. “But if we do, they’re ready and they’re ready to go.” It’s a goal of Biden’s to make people feel better about going on vacation if they’ve been vaccinated, so that they can go on with their plans.
Still Take Precautions
The President will say that if people have been vaccinated and take the precautions we all know to take, they should be able to enjoy Christmas and the holidays as planned. A senior administration official said this ahead of time, previewing a speech that Vice President Biden hopes will calm people down before the holidays. Vice President Joe Biden, on the other hand, is going to tell a lot of people who haven’t been vaccinated that they run a very high risk of getting sick or having to go to the hospital because the Omicron variant spreads quickly across the country. Officials say that hundreds of extra federal vaccinators will be sent to help add “thousands of appointments each week.” Biden will also announce new vaccination sites and more vaccine access. The speech came just a few days before Christmas, and it shows that Biden is paying more attention to the coronavirus pandemic as people are worried about new restrictions and lockdowns.
Even this month, the White House didn’t want to give out free at-home tests to everyone in the country. Officials in the administration were quick to defend the new plan, saying it “builds” on the administration’s previous testing efforts and pointing out that there is now more food. The official said: “We have the manufacturing capacity to start making a lot of things like that in January.” He’ll say that this is an uncertain time, and many people have questions about how to be safe, how to get together with their families, and if we’re going to lock down.
It will be said by the President that if you have been vaccinated, and especially if you’ve had your booster shot, you’re very likely to avoid getting very sick. There will be a lot of people who have been fully vaccinated get Covid-19 because Omicron spreads quickly. Vaccined people who get Covid will likely not show any signs or show signs that are mild.
