safely. reporter: another sign that the swabs could play a massive role in our return to normalcy. how far away are we from a time when we ll have enough toasts accomplish that? we can all hope that the testing bottlenecks are resolved quickly, but i m rather convinced that this will take some time. now, a lot of the criticism here is not just about the quantity of testing but it s about developing a more aggressive strategy. now, for example, pills that treat covid, they may be available in the near future, but they need to be taken within a few days of showing symptoms, so dr mitcha is advising the government to get tests strategically placed in the homes of vulnerable people to catch the cases and give them medicines and possibly to save lives this. new announcement from the biden administration, it could be one big step towards getting to that point. gabe, thanks so much for take the deep type into that. really appreciate it. for more on this and what we ll be hearing on
of protection or security if they all got a rapid test. reporter: dr. william schaffner is part of the advisory committee on immunization practices. i m certainly disappointed and concerned that testing is not more widely available. reporter: number parts of the country, finding a test is extremely difficult. appointments are tough to get and over-the-counter rapid tests are selling out online and at pharmacies. dr. brook watts works with metro health in ohio. there isn t a rapid test to be found, and the pcr tests that are offered generally at testing sites, the wait period is productsly seven days. the alarm has been sounded on testing levels since early in the pandemic. i think that our testing failures is perhaps the greatest failure of this pandemic. in recent months they have tried to ramp up production and used the defense action team said
there s plenty offing. reporter: but covid is surging and the testing supply hasn t kept up. we need to flood the system with tests and have tests available for anyone who wants them. reporter: senior administration officials tell cnn that president biden is set to announce new testing measures today. they will purchase half a billion at-home rapid tests to be delivered to americans for free starting in serbia and they will set up more federal testing sites including one in new york city that will open before christmas. this far into the pandemic the u.s. is, you know, loyalty years behind our are peer nation in terms of making the tests really available. reporter: last week the cdc director dr. walensky suggested that increased testing will help keep schools open. these studies demonstrate that testing works to keep unvaccinated children in schools
we begin this hour with the president s fight against the pandemic. a short time from now he ll speak to the nation and lay out his plan for fighting the new winter surge. so far we know that plan will include expanding access to testing, making some 500 million at-home test kits available to americans as soon as next month. increased support for hospitals asking the pentagon to deploy troops to some of the hardest hit areas and stepping up vaccine capacity, including new pop yup sites for people to get shots. according to the white house, the president will also lay out two messages for two groups of americans, for the vaccinated and boosted, no need to cancel holiday plans, and for those who are not, they are putting their lives at even greater risk right now. from what we re seeing in south africa, it might turn out to be overall omicron being somewhat less severe, but, you know, everything is relative. when you say less severe, you re
best to protect them as well as ourselves. it is stunning how quickly this has moved. not even a month has passed since we first heard about omicron. look what s happened in the past couple of weeks. less than 1% of new cases were only krofnlt week ending december 11th that jump to 12.6 and now 73.2% so in two weeks it went from almost nothing to being almost three-quarters of the new cases in the united states. now, let s take a look at where it s even higher than 73%. there are pockets in the southeast as well as in the northwest where it s actually omicron is actually 95% of new cases so as i said just stunning how quickly this variant has spread. kate? elizabeth, thank you for that. and we know that a key element of the president s announcement today it centers on testing as you new omicron variant washes across the country. the lack of tests and delay in test results has become even