Listen to this articleUS President Biden is set to announce new plans as coronavirus cases surge in the days before Christmas. The new plans will increase support for hospitals, improve access to COVID-19 testing through hundreds of millions of rapid at-home tests and expand the availability of vaccines to reduce the risks from the Omicron variant. Biden is set to address the nation on Tuesday afternoon from the White House to announce the new steps. The White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the President would outline how the country is prepared and preparing more to counter the surge in Omicron infections. He will also address the 40 million eligible adults in America who still are not vaccinated. The world is confronting the prospect of a second straight holiday season with COVID-19 as families and friends are starting gathering while the variant quickly spreads.
However, scientists don’t yet know whether Omicron causes more serious disease, but they do know that vaccination should offer strong protections against severe illness and death. President Biden was expected to emphasize data from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). The data shows the unvaccinated are 8-times more likely to be hospitalized and 14-times more likely to die from COVID-19. The Biden administration is prepared to deploy an additional 1,000 troops in medical professions to hospitals as well as direct federal medical personnel to Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Arizona, New Hampshire, and Vermont. There are also plans to send out additional ventilators and equipment from the national stockpile while expanding hospital capacity to handle infected patients. The government will purchase 500 million rapid at-home tests to be delivered for free to the homes of Americans who request them.
The new announcement will also establish new testing sites and use the Defense Production Act to help manufacture more tests. There will also be pop-up vaccination sites, hundreds of new people to administer the vaccines and new rules that make it easier for pharmacists to work across state lines. On Monday, Psaki said at a press briefing that the President doesn’t plan to impose any lockdowns and will instead focus on urging people to come forward for inoculation and booster shots. Psaki said, “This is not a speech about locking the country down. This is a speech about the benefits of being vaccinated”. Moreover, Biden has found himself in the delicate position of both alerting the country to the dangers posed by Omicron and reassuring Americans that the vaccines will protect them.
Recent Comments