Biden orders more medical help, at-home tests

Beginning next week, 1,000 military personnel will start deploying across the country to help overwhelmed medical facilities. They’ll help to ease staff shortages brought on by the COVID-19 omicron variant. An additional six military medical teams will fan out across six hard-hit states: Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, and Rhode Island. The new deployments will join other federal medical personnel who are already pitching in across the country.

What is the administration doing about omicron? President Joe Biden doubled the government’s purchase of at-home COVID-19 tests to 1 billion. The administration plans to unveil a new website next week for people to order testing kits for free. Biden also said the government would start distributing high-quality N95 masks for free across the country but did not say when. The White House said the federal government has 750 million N95 masks stockpiled. Scientists are hopeful that the omicron surge is peaking in parts of the United States and will fade in coming weeks.

Dig deeper: Read Daniel James Devine’s report in Beginnings about how the omicron wave is affecting hospitals.