Biden grapples with a Covid-19 testing failure that could have been foreseen
CNN
President Joe Biden and his team repeatedly promised more Covid-19 testing, including at-home kits that deliver rapid results, but they are now admitting a virus that is more adaptable than the politicians who fight it has outpaced them again.
For many Americans, this holiday season may be remembered for hours spent in long testing lines, or fruitlessly searching pharmacy shelves for antigen tests as the Omicron variant took over the previous Delta wave. Already patchy testing has been exposed by the latest highly transmissible variant, and the US is being compared unfavorably to other developed nations where citizens have easy access to rapid tests for free.
Biden told governors in a virtual meeting Monday that his administration should have done more to speed up the availability of rapid testing, before his pledge this month for 500 million kits due to begin distribution in January, which will be too late to help this week's holiday crunch.