President Joe Biden admitted Monday his administration had failed to provide enough coronavirus tests to the American people. The presiden...
President Joe Biden admitted Monday his administration had failed to provide enough coronavirus tests to the American people.
The president acknowledged there were long lines across the country in front of testing locations ahead of the Christmas holiday, especially after the swift spread of the omicron variant.
“Seeing how tough it was for some folks to get a test this weekend shows that we have more work to do,” he said during a video call with American governors on his efforts to combat the virus.
Biden detailed his efforts to ramp up testing but indicated it would have been harder to do better.
“It’s not enough. It’s clearly not enough,” Biden said. “If we had known, we would have gone harder, quicker if we could have.”
A sign directs commuters towards a coronavirus testing site in the Times Square subway station on December 27, 2021 in New York City. (Scott Heins/Getty Images)
Last week, Biden said he did not believe his administration had failed on acquiring enough tests, in an interview with ABC’s David Muir.
“I don’t think it’s a failure,” Biden replied. “I think it’s — you could argue that we should have known a year ago, six months ago, two months ago, a month ago.”
Biden boasted to governors that the federal government would purchase 500 million tests and distribute them to the American people.
During the call, Gov. Asa Hutchinson thanked Biden for working with governors but noted that the federal government’s effort to buy up tests would hurt state attempts to acquire tests.
“That dries up the supply chain for what we might offer as governors,” Hutchinson said.
Biden again urged Americans to get coronavirus vaccines and warned unvaccinated people they faced a higher risk of getting severely ill, being hospitalized, and death.
The call was led by Biden’s coronavirus response team from the imitation White House set in the Executive Office Building. Zients noted that it was the 40th time that the group of governors participated in the call with the team.
“That’s more times than I’ve seen ya,” Biden chuckled.
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