Washington [US]: US President Joe Biden will announce new actions on Tuesday (local time) to protect Americans and help communities and hospitals battle Omicron, building on the robust plan he announced earlier this month to get people maximum protection ahead of the winter and prepare for rising cases driven by the new variant, White House said in a statement. “President Biden will take several steps to ensure states and health systems across the country have the personnel, beds, and supplies they need as they battle rising Omicron hospitalisations, mostly among the unvaccinated,” the statement added. “The President is directing Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin to ready an additional 1,000 service members–military doctors, nurses, paramedics, and other medical personnel–to deploy to hospitals during January and February, as needed,” read the statement. With regard to helping Americans and communities battle Omicron, Biden will announce six emergency response teams–with more than 100 clinical personnel and paramedics–are deploying to six states now: Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Arizona, New Hampshire and Vermont. This is on top of the 300 federal medical personnel that we have deployed since we learned about Omicron. For convenient testing, Biden will announce new actions to ensure Americans have access to free testing, including convenient, at-home tests. Since January 2021, the Administration has already taken significant actions to increase testing. As a result, there are now 20,000 free testing sites across the US, four times as many at-home tests available to Americans than were available this summer, and at-home tests being made available at key community sites, such as community health centres and rural clinics.
