Joe Biden ABC intv
Biden says shortage of Covid tests is not a failure
02:22 - Source: CNN
CNN  — 

President Joe Biden on Wednesday acknowledged his administration has struggled to meet the nation’s demand for Covid-19 tests, but he defended the federal response to a surge in cases – driven largely by the Omicron variant.

In a one-on-one interview by ABC News, interviewer David Muir asked the President whether the administration’s efforts were “good enough,” given that many Americans are struggling to get access to Covid-19 testing ahead of Christmas.

“No, nothing’s been good enough,” Biden responded, before highlighting why the country is better prepared than it was during previous surges.

“I don’t think it’s a failure. 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 said.

On Tuesday, Biden announced that his administration would take a number of measures to deal with a surge of Covid-19 cases this winter.

The effort includes the allocation of 500 million coronavirus tests, with a plan for Americans to be able to request tests online and have them mailed to them. A website to request tests is expected to launch in January, but the White House has yet to finalize the number of tests that can be available for families and it’s not clear what the administration will do to reach Americans who don’t have internet access.

In his interview with ABC, Biden touted the new testing initiative but added, “I wish I had thought about ordering half a million (tests) two months ago, before Covid hit here.”

The President said that he and members of his family would test before celebrating Christmas together in person this weekend. He is expected to stay at the White House for the holiday weekend and may travel to his home state of Delaware next week, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said earlier Wednesday.

The administration has faced questions in recent days about whether it’s doing enough to address the rapidly spreading Omicron variant, given that a surge is happening now.

The Omicron variant, which the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says is now the dominant variant of coronavirus in the US, has been identified in every US state, in addition to Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico.

Administration officials have indicated that some new efforts announced amid the surge won’t be accessible until the middle of next year. For example, in recent days officials have noted the difficulties of producing some antiviral treatments for Covid-19 – like Paxlovid, a new pill authorized Wednesday by the Food and Drug Administration for people ill with Covid-19 to take at home, before they get sick enough to be hospitalized.

The Biden administration has purchased 10 million of the Pfizer courses. The White House indicated that 250,000 treatment courses will be available starting in January, with the rest being available by late summer.

Biden on Wednesday acknowledged the administration is “chasing” the highly transmissible Omicron variant, telling ABC, “The fact of the matter is we’re chasing whatever comes on the scene that hadn’t been there before – and this wasn’t there this last summer, for example.”

“But what do you plan for? You plan for what you think is available that is the most likely threat that exists at the time, and you respond to it,” Biden said. “And I think that that’s exactly what we’ve done. And so for example, Omicron is spreading rapidly, but the death rates are much, much lower than they were. This is not March of 2020 – it’s a very different time that we’re in now.”

He joins the ranks of other members of his administration defending the response to the Omicron surge, suggesting not much more could have been done.

Earlier Wednesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said during a news briefing that while the administration’s Covid-19 response team hasn’t done everything perfectly, he couldn’t name one thing specifically that he would have done differently over the last month.

“I think we’ve been intensively involved in getting the response to the Omicron variant. We jumped all over it,” Fauci said. “All of us spent the entire Thanksgiving weekend getting enough information to be able to respond in an appropriate way to Omicron. So … admittedly we can always do better, but I can’t think of something specifically that we would have done differently.”

On ABC, Biden also said a vaccine requirement for domestic air travel had been considered in the US, but “the recommendation I’ve gotten is (it’s) not necessary … even with Omicron.”

This story has been updated with more information from the interview.