NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF HEALTH, MD – President Joe Biden addressed the nation today at the National Institute of Health with key steps he plans in order to face the Omicron variant.
The plans include encouraging vaccinations and booster shots, working with governors to send out surge teams to help hospitals, encouraging children to be vaccinated, expanding at-home testing, expanding efforts to distribute antibody treatments and antiviral pills in hospitals, and leading the world in vaccine distribution to vaccinate other countries. Biden assures this will not add to mandates already in place and does not anticipate nor want another shutdown.
“We want to keep our business and schools open and running and our economy growing.” said Biden.
“We want to make it easier for families to get vaccinated all at once,” said Biden.
The Biden administration will be working to create family clinics where families can get vaccinated all at once.
With two cases of Omicron now confirmed in the United States, Biden says the doctors and scientists encourage booster shots.
“Scientists believe that people who get a booster shot are more protected than ever from COVID-19.” said Biden.
For those who receive Pfizer and Moderna, the booster should be administered after 6 months. For those who received Johnson and Johnson, the booster should be administered after 2 months. The booster is a half dose of the complete dosage that gives an extra boost to the vaccine.
Biden also compared last Christmas to this year, saying that Omicron should not be cause for panic when we have come much farther than last year.
Last December, fewer than 1% of American adults were fully vaccinated – this Christmas it’s 72% including 86% of seniors.
“This Christmas we also have safe and effective vaccines for children 5 and older. 20 million children and counting are now vaccinated,” stated Biden.
Last year, the majority of schools were closed. Now, 99% of schools are open.
Experts do say that COVID cases will continue to rise this winter so we must be ready.
Amongst the address was the discussion of expanding the national booster campaign to provide boosters to all eligible adults. The administration is doing things like reaching out to the American Association of Retired Persons with 38 million members and even giving them rides in addition to the 64 million people on Medicare, reminding them to get booster shots. The CDC and FDA recommend all adults get a booster. More than 100 million are eligible for booster shots but still have not gotten one.
80,000 locations are available in the nation to get the booster. If you need help finding where to get your booster, text your zipcode to 438829.
President Biden also announced there will be paid-off time for federal employees to go and get their booster or take someone to get their booster and asks the private sector to do the same.
Additionally, the administration is expanding efforts to vaccinate children. Children 5 and up can get vaccinated at one of 35,000 locations and 9,000 pop-up clinics for schools. You can also visit vaccines.com to find out locations.
Furthermore, the CDC is reviewing approaches like Test to Stay policy which will allow students to stay in the classroom even when a positive case pops up in the classroom so long as they are tested regularly and test negative.
This winter they will make free at-home tests to people. Production of more tests (at least 8 at-home testing options) can help test against the variant. Private health insurance will cover at-home tests next month. Free tests will be available at thousand locations.
Surge response teams provide badly needed staff for overrun hospitals’ emergency rooms and ICUs. “We will triple 60 teams to the nation from 20-40.”
“The increasing availability of medications like monoclonal antibody treatments which reduces hospitalization by up to 70% and for at-risk people. We’ve already distributed 3 million for this treatment. We have a new antiviral pill coming that could help people too.” said Biden.
This administration is also accelerating efforts to vaccinate the rest of the world especially because of travel. Over 280 million vaccines will be sent to 110 countries. This will add to 200 million more doses in the next hundred days and on our way to one billion.
For more information, head to witehouse.gov with full details.
