that saw the highest number of votes in u.s. history. we re also following the latest on the capitol riots. two men now facing charges of assault in connection with the death of capitol police officer brian sicknick. why did it take more than two months to arrest these guys? and why aren t they charged with murder? we ll have more on that in just a minute plus, the latest on the covid pandemic. numbers continue to go down in the u.s. but they re spiking over in europe, leading to tighter restrictions in several countries. to make matters worse, the vaccine rollout is on hold in several places in europe after officials stopped using one of the approved vaccines. we re going to dig into all of that. but we have to start with breaking news connected to one of the big of the trials in recent memory, the trial of former minneapolis police officer derek chauvin. as we speak, the judge is gaveling in and he s got a big question on his plate, whether to even move forward or put t
one is pcr tests need lab capacity, need a turn around time and they have been free and are available, but in short supply, not necessarily because of the tests themselves but because of the lab turn around. and that capacity is being built and ramped down. there were no at-home tests available when joe biden took office last january. and now there are many that have been authorized by the fda and, as you heard, a lot of the private manufacturers turned their attention elsewhere this summer when nobody was interested in tests, when people thought they were finished with this so that we re ramping up capacity and the biden administration also, as of last february, almost a year ago, invoked the defense production act to ramp up capacity. so it s coming. it s not as fast as people would like. there definitely are lines somewhere, but free tests are now going to be available for
people who are insured and for people who aren t insured, there will be an ability to get tests mailed directly to your home to go to a community health center to get a test. so access, affordability and capacity is really being built as we speak. the administration says insurance companies should start covering the costs of rapid tests by the end of the week and those 500 million test kits should start to be mailed to households later this month. but this is january 2022. he s been president for a year. are those big enough efforts to correct the previous year s failures on test, not to mention the failures during the trump administration? well, i don t think there was a year s failure on testing. i think the testing capacity has gone come under enormous strain with this wildly transmissible variant, with omicron, that just arrived. up until then, people could get tests, get home tests. they were available for nursing homes, available for schools. what we re seeing is this surge
Development comes as sources say new makeshift hospital to be built on a ‘scalable plan’ that allows for capacity to be increased if the outbreak gets out of hand.