WASHINGTON : The Biden administration will distribute 500 million free at-home Covid-19 testing kits to Americans and take steps to deploy federal medical personnel to overburdened hospitals this winter, as the Omicron variant spreads around the country.
President Biden will outline the plan during a speech at the White House on Tuesday. His administration is grappling with how to publicly underscore the urgency surrounding the highly transmissible variant, while seeking to convey that the U.S.
is better prepared to battle the pandemic than it was a year ago. Mr. Biden is expected to stress that Americans should take the Omicron variant seriously but shouldn’t panic, according to administration officials.