wait is more than two hours. the problems with testing, particularly frustrating, of course, during this holiday week when a lot of people are trying to preserve the plans that they have. so the question now, what to do about those new year s eve parties. dr. fauci was asked and he said if you re talking about a larger party, 30, 40, 50 people and you don t know nch s vaccination status, he s saying that this is not the year to do that. alexandra field, thank you. let s bring in white house correspondent jeremy diamond who is traveling with president biden in rehoboth beach, delaware. president biden was asked about shortening the quarantine time for positive tests earlier today before we got this new guidance from the cdc. what did he have to say? that s right, jake. just hours before the cdc made this announcement, president biden was asked about this. he said that he would follow the advice of his medical experts when indeed they d recommend a change to that isolation period.
clearly his administration has not been able to meet that demand and that he wishes that he had done more. he said last week, for example, that he wishes that he had ordered those 500 million tests previously. now the white house has said the manufacturing capacity simply wasn t there. but we also heard president biden do today was try and thread the needle between acknowledging that failure and also making clear how much progress has been made over the last year. citing the fact that for example nine at-home covid tests have been approved. there were none when president biden came into office nearly a year ago. so that was kind of what you heard from the president. acknowledging on the one hand that they have come up short on the testing front but also that there has been a lot of progress in his time in office. jeremy diamond traveling with president biden in rehoboth beach, delaware. thanks so much. appreciate it. today, thousands of holiday travelers are scrambling to rebook fl