For the first time, people in the U.S. can log on to a government website and order free, at-home COVID-19 tests. But the White House push may do little to ease the omicron surge, and experts say Washington will have to do more to fix the testing system.
Experts say the plan to distribute 1 billion tests is a good first step, but it must become a regular part of the pandemic response. In the same way that it has made vaccines free and plentiful, the government must use its purchasing power to assure a“The playbook for rapid tests should look exactly like the playbook for vaccines,” said Zoe McLaren, a health economist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Also, some people who live in buildings with multiple units had their requests for tests rejected, with the website saying tests had already been ordered for that address. As those complaints surfaced on social media, people began sharing advice on how to enter apartment or unit numbers in a way that the website would accept them.
“If you leave the manufacturers to their own devices, they’re just going to respond to what’s happening right now,” said Dr. Amy Karger, a testing specialist at the University of Minnesota Medical School. “And then there’s not a lot of bandwidth if something surprising happens, as it did with omicron.”
Dr. David Michaels, a former member of President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 advisory board, said the administration will probably need to request more federal money to fund testing for years to come. “The fact is we just don’t have that kind of mass testing capacity in the U.S.” said Dr. Michael Mina, chief science officer for home testing service eMed, who once called for using billions of tests per month to crush the pandemic. “We should now be thinking about how to use these tests in a strategic way. We don’t want to just dilute them out across the population.”
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