Americans with private health insurance to be reimbursed for at-home COVID-19 tests

Americans with private health insurance will be reimbursed for at-home tests, President Biden is announcing Thursday, and international travelers will now be required to undergo stricter COVID-19 testing, according to a phone briefing by a senior administration official Wednesday.

The new measures the president is expected to describe in remarks at the National Institutes of Health are part of a new administration strategy to curb the virus this winter, as the new Omicron coronavirus variant prompts concerns about how easily it may spread, how severe its symptoms are and whether existing vaccines are effective against it.

International travelers will be required to test negative within one day of their departure to the U.S., regardless of vaccination status or nationality. The earlier Centers for Disease Control and Prevention order already applied to virtually all inbound international travelers, including U.S. citizens, but had allowed fully vaccinated travelers a 3-day window, compared to a 1-day window, to be tested for unvaccinated travelers, based on the agency's modeling. The updated requirement would remove the extra days that fully vaccinated travelers had been allowed to be tested, an attempt to reduce the risk of bringing COVID infections into the U.S.