WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden’s steps to backstop hospitals and distribute coronavirus test kits, however welcome, are too little too late to stem a surge of Omicron-related coronavirus cases over Christmas and New Year’s, health experts said.
A day after Biden outlined plans to distribute 500 million at-home coronavirus test kits, Anne Rimoin, a UCLA professor of epidemiology, praised his focus on testing, a “critical tool” that the United States was “woefully” behind on.
“Unfortunately, it’s late in coming and will be a small drop in the bucket compared to the tsunami of cases on the horizon.”
The tests promised by the White House starting in January equate to just one or two per U.S. resident. Households need far more to make daily decisions about exposure, Rimoin said.
“We need those tests now,” she said. U.S. testing is behind the curve because of a lack of skilled workers, a shortage of at-home tests and under-investment in recent months, according to interviews with more than a dozen officials, health providers and testmakers.
Biden, a Democrat who took office in January, campaigned on a promise to take control of the pandemic, which his predecessor, Republican President Donald Trump, played down as hundreds of thousands died.
He has focused largely on persuading Americans to get vaccinated, amid pushback from many Republican leaders who reject vaccine and masking rules and an anti-vaccination movement fueled by conspiracy theories on social media. The United States recently passed 800,000 deaths the most in the world, and its vaccination rate lags most rich nations.
Biden’s latest measures, including new pop-up vaccination clinics run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and federal testing sites in the hot spot of New York City and elsewhere, were welcomed by health experts and local politicians.
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