The Biden administration will wait until 2022 to sign contracts for the highly in-demand 500 million coronavirus test kits, according to White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients.
After not acting on his promise to order enough testing kits ahead of the omicron variant, the White House has still not executed the purchase order for 500 million testing kits that Biden announced American taxpayers would purchase last week, Reuters reported.
“I’ve ordered half a billion of the … test kits that are going to be available to be sent to every home in America if anybody wants them,” Biden told ABC News’ David Muir in an interview on December 23.
“But the answer is,” Biden continued in response to Muir’s question if the absence of testing kits during the omicron chaos was “a failure.”
“I don’t think it’s a failure,” Biden claimed. “I think it’s — you could argue that we should have known a year ago, six months ago, two months ago, a month ago.”
“I wish I had thought about ordering 500 million at-home tests two months ago,” he said.
Despite Biden comments last week, Biden promised February 17 and March 11 that he would have tests available for those in need.
Moreover, Biden also pledged in February of 2021 the nation would be back to normal by Christmastime, but after the delta and omicron variants have reached the U.S., Biden acknowledged the federal government cannot solve the spread of the Chinese virus.
Yet Biden indicated Tuesday he is willing to impose a federal domestic travel vaccine mandate if medical experts check off on the law.
Dr. Anthony Fauci has given mixed comments about whether he will allow domestic travel to be restricted by a vaccination mandate. “I think [it] is reasonable to consider,” Fauci said Monday on MSNBC.
On CNN Fauci conveyed a different tone. “I doubt if we’re going to see something like that in the reasonably foreseeable future,” he said.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø