by Jarrett Renshaw and Ahmed Aboulenein
WASHINGTON, Dec.21 (Reuters) – The Biden administration will order 500 million COVID-19 tests and distribute them free in January to Americans who request them online in an attempt to contain the wave of the Omicron variant, highly contagious, which is currently sweeping the United States.
The federal government will also mobilize a thousand members of the medical services of the army to help hospitals and it will open screening centers, starting with New York as of this week.
US President Joe Biden will unveil the initiatives Tuesday in a speech with particularly serious emphasis on the risks faced by people who still refuse to be vaccinated, said a senior member of his administration.
“We will also point out that if you are not vaccinated, you have a high risk of getting sick. This variant is highly contagious and the probability of being hospitalized is eight times higher in unvaccinated people and that of dying from COVID. is 14 times more, “said the federal government official.
As Americans are already starting to move across the United States for the holiday season, new COVID-19 contaminations are surging across the country, as in many other parts of the world. Federal authorities estimate that the Omicron variant of the coronavirus that causes the disease is now responsible for 73% of all of these new cases, up from less than 1% in early December.
Over the weekend, long lines formed at the entrance to testing centers in many US cities, including New York or Washington, with many Americans wanting to know if they are carriers of the virus before they go. join their families for the holidays.
THE NUMBER OF TESTS PER FIREPLACE NOT YET DECIDED
Faced with criticism accusing him of insufficient resources in terms of screening, Joe Biden will announce the acquisition by the federal government of 500 million self-tests which will be distributed in January to the population.
Americans will be able to obtain them via a new website but the authorities have still not decided on the number of tests available per household.
The administration will also open several federal testing centers, the first before Christmas in New York City, the official said.
“The testing in this country is much better than it used to be, but there is still work to be done and we are taking action now,” he said.
This federal test distribution plan is complementary to a project, also supposed to be implemented in January, for health insurers to provide free tests to their policyholders.
Despite the emergency, Joe Biden will tell Americans this Tuesday that people who have been vaccinated and respect barrier gestures such as wearing a mask during their travels should not have any particular fear of celebrating the end of the year holidays as planned.
The number of new infections has increased 9% in the past week in the United States, and 57% since the beginning of the month, according to a Reuters calculation.
The number of people hospitalized for COVID-19 has climbed 26% this month, with hospitals in parts of the country already saturated with patients infected with the Delta variant.
The United States has the heaviest official death toll from this pandemic, with almost 810,000 deaths and 51 million infections. (Report Jarrett Renshaw and Ahmed Aboulenein, French version Bertrand Boucey, edited by Jean-Stéphane Brosse)