Almost half of 500 million COVID tests offered for free by government still unclaimed
CBSN
Washington — Nearly half of the 500 million free COVID-19 tests the Biden administration recently made available to the public still haven't been claimed as virus cases plummet and people feel less urgency to test.
Wild demand swings have been a subplot in the pandemic, from vaccines to hand sanitizer, along with tests. On the first day of the White House test giveaway in January, COVIDtests.gov received over 45 million orders. Now officials say fewer than 100,000 orders a day are coming in for the packages of four free rapid tests per household, delivered by the U.S. Postal Service.
Still, the White House sees the program as a step toward a deeper, yet more elastic, testing infrastructure that will accommodate demand surges and remain on standby when cases wane. "We totally intend to sustain this market," Dr. Tom Inglesby, testing adviser to the COVID-19 response team, told The Associated Press. "We know the market is volatile and will come up and down with surges in variants."
Billions of cicadas are emerging across about 16 states in the Southeast and Midwest. Periodical cicadas used to reliably emerge every 13 or 17 years, depending on their brood. But in a warming world where spring conditions arrive sooner, climate change is messing with the bugs' internal alarm clocks.
Senate Democrats to unveil package to protect IVF as party makes reproductive rights push this month
Washington — A group of Senate Democrats is set to unveil a new package to protect access to IVF on Monday, as the party makes a push around reproductive rights this month — two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.