President Biden conceded Monday that although his administration has been working hard to ramp up availability of over-the-counter COVID-19 tests, the efforts are still "not enough," Insider reports.
During a COVID-19 response call with the National Governor's Association, Biden shared with 25 governors the state of play as it relates to the Omicron variant and at-home test kits. "We went from no over-the-counter tests in January, to 46 million in October, 100 million in November, and almost 200 million in December," he said, per Insider. "But it's not enough. It's clearly not enough. If we had known, we'd have gone harder and quicker if we could have."
The president also discussed his plan to send 500 million at-home test kits to Americans who request them and use the Defense Production Act to speed things up. "Seeing how tough it was for some folks to get a test this weekend shows that we have more work to do and we're doing it," he said, noting in-person testing nonetheless increased under his administration.
Biden's Monday comments echo similar remarks he made Wednesday during an interview with ABC News' David Muir, Politico reports. When asked by Muir if the country's current testing situation was good enough, Biden replied, "No, nothing's been good enough," similarly pivoting to discuss some COVID-related progress made during his tenure.