President Biden’s administration is devoted to making Covid-19 testing faster and easier as it recently announced an investment worth $1 billion to boost rapid testing at home for Americans. This is an additional investment towards the pandemic by the United States government to ramp up the supply of testing kits by December.
The White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients confirmed that the Covid-19 test kit manufacturers have committed to the government that they would be supplying about two hundred million home tests by year-end.
The $1 billion commitment comes right after the US Food and Drug Administration went ahead to authorize a rapid antigen at-home test called Flowflex. The test, which is developed by ACON laboratories, will work towards accelerating the pace of antigen tests around the country.
President Biden, in September, had made an announcement promising a $2 billion investment for rapid tests towards food banks and community health centres and schools. He also stated how retailers like Amazon and Walmart would be selling rapidly these test kits at cost until December.
The administration also committed to spending around $2 billion for the purchase of about 280 million at-home tests that would be supplied to homeless shelters, prisons, community testing areas and long-term-care facilities.
While the United States has been working to accelerate the rate of Covid-19 tests and speed up vaccinations, there’s still some lacking with the numbers considering the population. Dr Robert Redfield, Former US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director, did acknowledge the fact that the Trump administration he served under should have worked more in building up testing capacity as early as the first few months when the pandemic hit the world.
The rapid antigen tests are not only cheaper but also faster, their benefit being that they can be tested at home, and alone as well.
