million tests next month according to a memo obtained by cnn. we are not going to stop there. those numbers will keep going up in the months ahead. reporter: and, erin, the white house is also finalizing plans for those 500 million rapid at-home tests they plan to send to every american who requests one. the first of those tests are expected to go out later-this month. the rest of them will go out in the next 60 days but experts are saying that while this is a good sign in the right direction, it s still going to take months to get testing where it needs to be in this country. erin? months, of course, is, you know, kind of makes defeats the whole point. thank you very much, jeremy. appreciate it. i want to go now to joseph alan. he has been at the forefront of so much dpied guidance. his group at harvard wrote one of the first plans to re-open schools safely that was adopted by several major cities. so professor alan, i appreciate your time. i always have since the beginning as
taking office, president biden facing a stubborn problem he vowed to solve long lines and empty shelves, exposing a testing system failing, once again, to match demand. and biden s own rhetoric. anyone who wants a test should be able to get one, period. biden came into office with a plan to expand testing. pouring billions of dollars to boost manufacturing and ramp up testing in schools and underserved communities. but his top priority was vaccines, which kept most people out of the hospital and even slashed the chances of getting and spreading the virus. and then, came omicron. the vaccines were really doing their job to decrease the number of cases. um, so there wasn t demand. but then, because of the variants, we have had this increase in cases and, therefore, increase in demand. reporter: biden has acknowledged coming up short on testing, but resists calling it a failure. i don t think it s a failure. i think it s a you could argue that we should have known a year ago
washington, d.c., are ahead of the curve, but not by much. and so expect that in the next three or four weeks we re going to see everyone hit with this. reporter: new jersey identified more than 28,000 new covid-19 cases via pcr testing, governor phil murphy said on thursday. the number of positive cases likely higher due to at-home testing, he added. some governors calling on the national guard. ohio governor mike dewine deploying troops. georgia also deployed 200 troops in the same week that major health systems saw 100% to 200% increase in hospitalizations. new york doubling its national guard deployment to 100 and preparing for 80 guardsmen to undergo emergency medical training next month, according to the governor, with more virus spreading in the country, more than 30 colleges and universities are changing the start of their spring semester, and more children are getting sick and being hospitalized than
keeping himself safe. take a listen. last year was a lot easier. i came here last year for christmas as well, and it was a lot smoother than it is now with the restrictions, especially from taiwan. there s a lot of traveling restrictions so we had to make sure we got pcr-tested the day before which was a hassle but once everything got completed it s pretty much you know, once you get to the airport and everything checks out it s seamless. a lot more stricter in taiwan. a lot more stricter. there s mass regulations and pcr testing and so on and so forth. the u.s. is more relaxed and with more people being vaccinated here they can ease their restrictions more than taiwan. so jessica, you heard all the challenges and the differences between the different countries. a lot of people talking about what it took for them to be able to get on these flights to see their family and friends, but they all told me they were going to do whatever they needed to do to see their family because for
impossible. there were only a handful of authorized at-home tests, and plummeting demand during the summer cause several test makers to downscale production. republicans have seized on the failure. two senators calling out a quote fundamental lack of strategy and failure to anticipate future testing needs. in his first network interview, the white house s new testing coordinator responding. this administration s been pursuing a strategy to expand testing since its earliest days and will continue to do that. reporter: the white house did take steps to boost production in the late summer and fall, purchasing $3 billion in rapid tests and spending another $1 billion to secure key supplies for pcr testing. and with the new fast track to fda thaurgds, there are now nine at home antigen tests on the market. the results? at-home testing capacity is up, from 46 million tests produced in october, to 300 million per month today. and the white house projects a supply of at least 350 to 400