spring and summer, i think relief is on the horizon. that s most likely. tomorrow, at least, americans can begin to get covid tests, they can go to covidtests.gov and order up to four at-home covid tests per household. how significant is this? i think it s great. we have to triage who should be testing. a lot of that supply will still not be available for every household, the minute you press click. and so schools, individuals that are symptomatic, congregated living settings with high-risk individuals, that s still the priority since testing supply is constrained, but it s absolutely a great move. let me emphasize here, andrea, also for all of your viewers out here, that i do think those of us that have seen what s happening over the last few weeks in icus across the country, we re seeing the same thing. we re seeing confusing on the part of individuals very high risk. those 65 and older, or with
heidi, let me start with you. take us through the larger points the president made about this pandemic on wednesday in his news conference, and specifically about his administration s response to it. reporter: yeah, craig. just acknowledging how people are feeling with those numbers you just mentioned. exhausted. demoralized. i a bit of a national therapy session, and acknowledging some specific things that maybe he could have done differently or better. like testing. started with a testing supply earlier. a lot of it was just reframing the conversation around covid with this new variant that s evading vaccines. as covid being something that we are going to conquer which is what we heard a lot of during the campaign to something that we re going to manage and that things will get better. here s what he said with that things will get better message. billions of dollars made available. that s there. not every school district has used it as well as it should be used. but it s there. s
that s supposed to take place on january 15th. those of us who want to visit our nation s capitol, if you are unvaccinated you are not able to go restaurants and museums and not participate in life in washington, d.c. even though you should be able to do so in your nation s capitol. a lot of this, in my opinion, is about grabbing power, not actually following the facts and following the science. katie: dr. makary, you know, we have seen this testing shortage. we now know the biden administration rejecteds very robust plan in october to get ahead of this testing crunch before the holidays but it s the cdc and dr. fauci have said go ahead and get a test even if you are not showing symptoms. are we actually overtesting at all? is that something that s causing this problem? well, you can t have it both ways and have a very limited testing supply that we re rations and at the same time give guidance to every american and every business to do routine screening just to get together or eng
ration ration these very limited therapeutics on top of all the vaccine duadvocacy we need. dr. mazer, do you see do you seek omicron being controlled with testing? without enough tests it seems unlikely that can happen. i think it would be very challenging to have enough tests to control the spread at a population level. we see in places like england and germany that have really abundant testing. they re unable to control the spread completely, even if the testing is providing some benefit, and even now the u.k., you know, there s reports that they re having shortages of tests even though they have an enormous and free supply of tests. omicron is blowing through, you know, any testing supply. dr. mazer, what do you think they should be doing with tests, to help the greater good. i think, you know, a lot of universities and schools, i
government has to make sure that there are tests available. government has to make sure that there are tests available. excuse me for interrupting there are tests available. excuse me for interrupting but there are tests available. excuse me for interrupting but the there are tests available. excuse me for interrupting but the supply - there are tests available. excuse me for interrupting but the supply of- for interrupting but the supply of tests is the issue? if the government is asking them to test twice a week and schools are being given the kids to do it and there is some responsibility on the schools to ensure that their pupils take those tests. as we have seen over the christmas and new year period there is a real challenge with testing availability at the moment. i am angry and frustrated at this. i raise the issue of testing supply with the hills secretary three weeks ago only to be told in front of the whole house of commons that supply of tests was not an issue. clear