Rising cases, Omicron highlight holes in Biden's Covid strategy
The White House has sought to depoliticise the issue, sending health officials onto Fox News, even as the cable channel's conservative commentators sow doubt about vaccines and masks.
Despite their sometimes significant differences, the White House sees Fox News as an important outlet to disseminate public health information, including on Biden’s Omicron strategy, a White House official said.
The president has sparred with Republican governors whose policies clash with his...
The White House has sought to depoliticise the issue, sending health officials onto Fox News, even as the cable channel's conservative commentators sow doubt about vaccines and masks.
Despite their sometimes significant differences, the White House sees Fox News as an important outlet to disseminate public health information, including on Biden’s Omicron strategy, a White House official said.
The president has sparred with Republican governors whose policies clash with his. More recently, his rhetoric has been less political, focused directly on urging people to get a shot. On Thursday, he sounded a grim warning, predicting a winter of "severe illness and death" for those who are unvaccinated.
Test, mask supplies an issue
Biden said earlier this month the government would require private health insurers to reimburse their 150 million customers for the cost of over-the-counter, at-home Covid-19 tests and make 50 million tests available free through rural clinics and health centres for the uninsured.
Critics called that insufficient.
"There's more uninsured Americans than that, and what we were only supposed to take one rapid test ever? These policies are completely inadequate," said Angela Rasmussen, an American virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada.
Surging demand for Covid-19 tests from US employers bringing employees back to work exacerbated a nationwide shortage of rapid tests in the fall, driving up costs for state and local testing programmes.
The recent spike in cases has led to long testing lines across the country and left Americans scrambling to secure at-home tests at pharmacies and online. The White House said there are tens of thousands of free testing sites across the country, the supply of at-home tests has quadrupled, and a dozen new rapid tests have been authorised to come to the market.
"We’re working with governors and state and local health officials to add more capacity," a White House official said. "We’re also working with manufacturers to expand capacity."
Promote mask-wearing
Former CDC director Tom Frieden told Reuters the administration also needs to step up the promotion of mask-wearing and that subsidising the costs of masks or distributing them could help.
"Masks... and vaccination are by far the two most important interventions, and it's still far too hard for someone to find out the quality of a mask they're buying, to get masks at a reasonable price. It's still too much of a Wild West out there in terms of the market," he said.
The Omicron variant that is prolonging the global crisis may not be the last, as vast majorities of people in less-developed nations remain unvaccinated, giving the virus room to mutate.
Experts said the Biden administration could have done more to get vaccines to the rest of the world, protecting other populations and Americans as well.
"There's been sort of an ongoing battle with the White House to do more," said Gonsalves, noting the new Omicron variant came from abroad.
- Reuters
