By Nathalie Voit

A senior Biden administration official said that the White House is preparing to distribute millions of at-home COVID-19 testing kits for free next month to U.S. households that request one.

President Joe Biden is expected to announce the measure in a speech to the nation on Tuesday.

The White House is also expected to announce other precautionary steps it will be instituting as of January to combat the surge in Omicron cases, like the deployment of 1,000 military medical personnel to hospitals nationwide and the launch of new federal testing sites around the country.

“This is not a speech about locking the country down,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Dec. 20.

The president is expected to emphasize the seriousness of the Omicron variant while relaying calm to the nation. The importance of vaccination will be stressed during the address. According to the senior official, President Biden is expected to warn the nation’s 40 million unvaccinated Americans they are at much greater risk of contracting the virus and dying from it.

“If you are unvaccinated, you are at high risk of getting sick,” said the official. “This variant is highly transmissible, and the unvaccinated are eight times more likely to be hospitalized and 14 times more likely to die from Covid.”

Vaccinated people who are adhering to public health guidelines like masking while traveling, on the other hand, should feel at ease spending the holidays with their families, the official said. Even if they contract the virus, they will likely have “no symptoms or mild symptoms,” especially if they have received their booster shots.

In addition to the free delivery of 500 million at-home rapid tests to all Americans who request them from January on, the president is expected to remark on other anti-Covid federal measures during his address.

Among those will be the deployment of federal emergency medical response teams to six states: Arizona, Michigan, New Hampshire, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Vermont. The White House is also expected to prepare to station 1,000 military medical personnel to hospitals across the country in January and February. Medical teams, ambulances, and other invaluable equipment will be deployed to facilities that need them over the next few months, the officials said, according to The Wall Street Journal.

President Biden will also announce the creation of new federal testing sites nationwide, with the first launch in New York City, notorious for its Covid-19 case count, by Christmas, BBC reported.

Omicron is now the dominant strain in the U.S., the CDC said Monday. The South African variant accounts for nearly three-quarters of all new cases. Because it is so transmissible, “being vaccinated with two doses may not be enough,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told CNBC Dec. 21.

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