FILE - President Joe Biden speaks on the January jobs reports during an event in the State Dining Room of the White House February 4, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) The strategy comes on the heels of Biden's State of the Union address, in which he repeated that the U.S.
would "never just accept living with COVID-19" and highlighted steps to continue combating the virus to "move forward safely."Nearly half of the 500 million free COVID-19 tests the Biden administration recently made available to the public still have not been claimed as virus cases plummet and people feel less urgency to test.
Meanwhile, the CDC loosened its guidance, saying people can stop wearing masks if they live in counties where the virus poses a low or medium threat to hospitals — accounting for more than 70% of the U.S.
population. Multiple states are also easing pandemic-induced restrictions. Schoolchildren in California, Oregon and Washington will no longer be required to wear masks as part of new indoor mask policies the Democratic governors of all three states announced jointly on Monday."With declining case rates and hospitalizations across the West, California, Oregon and Washington are moving together to update their masking guidance," the governors said in a statement.