President Joe Biden conceded Monday that his administration has not done enough to ramp up COVID-19 testing across the country, after going on the defense a week earlier in response to questions about the lack of testing in the face of the rapidly spreading omicron variant.
On a call with many of the country’s governors and his COVID-19 response team, Biden acknowledged the testing shortage impacting states. The president spoke about how the country went from no over-the-counter tests in January – when he took office — to 46 million in October, 100 million in November and almost 200 million in December.
“But it’s clearly not enough. If we’d have known, we’d have gone harder, quicker if we could have,” Biden said. “We have to do more, we have to do better, and we will. … Seeing how tough it was for some folks to get a test this weekend shows that we have more work to do.”
