United States President Joe Biden's administration has continued to struggle to assure the American public that he has the coronavirus pandemic under control after they planned to distribute at-home kits that delivered rapid test results.
The holiday season is remembered for the hours spent in long testing lines or fruitlessly looking for antigen tests on pharmacy shelves amid the Omicron variant surge. The most recent variant, which is also highly transmissible and has been compared to the Delta variant, has caused patchy testing among the public.
Biden's Federal Plan
The situation in the United States has caused people worldwide to compare the country to other developed nations that provide easy access to rapid tests of the coronavirus infection for free. In a virtual meeting held on Monday, President Biden told governors that his administration should have been more zealous to speed up the availability of rapid testing within the nation.
In his statements, the Democrat also pledged this month to distribute 500 million kits starting in January, which will come too late to assist during the holiday season coming this week. Biden said that what the federal government was doing was not enough. He said that if officials had had more information, they would have cracked down on the Omicron variant even harder, CNN reported.
In an interview just before Christmas, the U.S. president denied that the lack of at-home testing kits distributed to the American people was considered a "failure." However, the Democrat added that he considered the idea of ordering 500 million at-home tests "two months ago."
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On Tuesday, Biden boasted about his "federal plan" that seeks to combat the coronavirus pandemic and the spreading Omicron variant. In a Twitter post, the Democrat said that his administration was supporting every governor in the United States who was working to fight against the coronavirus in their state.
In his social media post, Biden also mentioned that he rolled out a federal plan last week that would address and tackle the Omicron surge by adding more to vaccination and booster capacity, hospital equipment, staff, and many others, Fox News reported.
Pandemic Situation
But previously, Biden said that there was no "federal solution" against the pandemic, saying it was to be resolved at the "state level." "I'm looking at [New Hampshire] Gov. [Chris] Sununu on the board here. He talks about that a lot. And it ultimately gets down to where the rubber meets the road and that's where the patient is in need of help or preventing the need for help," said the U.S. president.
However, the Democrat has given the federal government a central role in coronavirus pandemic mitigation measures. Previously, the Education Department opened civil rights probes that analyzed several states after they banned school mask mandates.
The situation comes after Biden said on Monday that he supported the proposal to shorten COVID-19 quarantine requirements for people who have tested positive for the infection. He said that he was on board the change if U.S. health authorities agreed to recommend the idea, Reuters reported.
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