On Wednesday, the White House announced that it would be purchasing $1 billion worth of rapid, at-home COVID-19 tests to help with the current shortages of tests.
The purchase will quadruple the number of tests that Americans will have access to by December, Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said.
The White House COVID-19 Response Team also shared via Twitter that the increase in at-home tests will help make them more accessible as more than 30,000 community-based locations will now offer the tests.
On Monday, it was announced by the Food and Drug Administration that it would allow the sale of an antigen test from the U.S. company Acon Laboratories.
With the purchase of the additional tests, White House officials shared that they expect the number of at-home tests to increase by 200 million per month by December.
The chief executive of the Association of Public Health Laboratories, Scott Becker, shared just how necessary this purchase of tests is.
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"This is a big deal," Becker said, The Washington Post reported.
Becker went on to share that the nation's efforts to fight the virus have been hindered by the inability to track the surge of cases due to the Delta variant.
"The White House is beginning to take testing as seriously as they've taken vaccinations," he said.
With costs for testing being another hot topic, as insurance companies no longer cover 100% of the cost for COVID-19 treatments, Zients shared that the administration is working to double the federal government's free testing program. They are now aiming to raise the number of free testing centers to 20,000.
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Since March 2020, experts have continuously shared that a key to ending the pandemic starts with testing. As a result, Biden announced last month that he is attempting to expand the testing capacity so that the virus can be properly tracked.
These efforts, along with an increase in vaccinations, will hopefully bring an end to the pandemic.