President Biden on Wednesday will announce the rollout of a new “one-stop shop” website to help Americans access COVID-19 vaccines, tests, treatments and masks as part of his administration’s continued efforts to fight the ongoing pandemic.
The website, COVID.gov, also allows those who visit it to find the level of COVID-19 in their communities.
One of the site's features is a “test-to-treat” locator that helps people find pharmacies and community health centers where they can get tested. Biden announced the new test-to-treat initiative during his State of the Union address at the start of March and the administration says it has already stood up 2,000 of these sites.
“The Administration has worked over the past 14 months to set up over 90,000 vaccination sites, make more than 400 million high-quality masks available for free, send free tests to peoples’ homes, and stand up new test-to-treat sites where people can get tested and receive life-saving antivirals all in one place,” reads a White House fact sheet announcing the new website.
“Now, with a click of a button, people will be able to find where to access all of these tools, as well as receive the latest CDC data on the level of COVID-19 in their community,” it continues.
Biden is scheduled to deliver remarks from the White House on Wednesday afternoon about the status of the pandemic and a White House official said that he will discuss the rollout of the new website.
The website will help bolster the administration's new pandemic strategy aimed at managing the virus so Americans can return to more normal daily activities.
Biden is also expected to put more pressure on Congress to pass additional funding to support the federal government’s COVID-19 response.
The White House says that the administration has stopped reimbursing health care providers for treating uninsured Americans for COVID-19, canceled orders of monoclonal antibody treatments, among other actions, due to the lack of funding. Officials have also warned that the federal government will not be able to purchase booster doses for every American if they are approved.
Biden plans to “send an urgent and direct message to Congress to act swiftly to secure funding for our COVID response, and emphasize that the progress we have made is at severe risk if they fail to act,” the White House official said.
There is not a clear path for the funding in Congress and Democrats were forced to strip additional pandemic funding out of a massive appropriations bill passed earlier this month due to a partisan disagreement.
