What's the Strategy on COVID-19?

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Congress has provided billions of dollars for testing to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and to safely keep the economy going. Despite the investment, pharmacy shelves are empty of tests, and Americans are struggling to make testing appointments.
• Instead of increasing testing as a safeguard for winter and holiday travel, the Biden administration allowed supply capacity to lapse, leaving the American people with fewer options to protect themselves.
• Americans deserve proper oversight of taxpayer money and an effective strategy to increase testing. 

Congress invested heavily in testing to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and preserve the American economy. In 2020, Congress passed five bipartisan appropriations bills that included more than $35 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services for testing-related activities. This year, Democrats passed a partisan “COVID relief” package with another $47.8 billion for testing. 

Biden Promised Testing

Despite the massive investment, Americans face limited availability of at-home test kits and long waits for laboratory tests. Health departments, pharmacies, and hospitals had limited supplies when people needed them most: during the recent holiday season and Omicron variant surge.

The Biden administration is once again behind the eight ball on strategy and execution. After inheriting a situation in which vaccination rates were on the rise and tests and treatments were widely available, the administration suffered from false optimism and failed to ensure that capacity was ready for future surges. Instead of increasing testing as a safeguard for winter and holiday travel, the Biden administration allowed capacity to lapse, which left Americans with fewer options to protect themselves. Meanwhile, Omicron surged – even in the most highly vaccinated parts of the country – and Americans waited in long lines for limited tests. On December 21, President Biden announced the federal government would purchase 500 million tests, an average of just 1.5 tests per person, that would only begin to be available in January.

Vaccines have proven to be a vital and effective tool to protect against severe disease, but to fight an evolving virus like COVID-19 we need the Biden administration to ensure people have as many options as possible. Instead, the administration has diverted billions of dollars meant to expand testing and continually changes its public health guidance, creating confusion for families, schools, and states.

Wasted COVID Money

While President Biden has been in office Democrats have held no appropriations hearings to account for the unprecedented trillions of dollars in coronavirus relief spending. The administration’s failed strategy and lack of accountability has disrupted Americans’ lives through inadequate access to medical services like treatments and testing, has continued workforce disruption, and has caused ongoing harm to people who are most at risk. Republican senators recently wrote to the secretary of health and human services asking him to explain what the department has done with the funding specifically appropriated for testing. Two years into a global pandemic, the American people deserve answers.