By JOSH BOAK, RI­CAR­DO ALON­SO-ZAL­DIVAR and COLLEEN LONG | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

WASH­ING­TON (AP) — Fight­ing the omi­cron vari­ant surg­ing through the coun­try, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden an­nounced the gov­ern­ment will pro­vide 500 mil­lion free rapid home-test­ing kits, in­crease sup­port for hos­pi­tals un­der strain and re­dou­ble vac­ci­na­tion and boost­ing ef­forts.

At the White House on Tues­day, Biden de­tailed ma­jor changes to his COVID-19 win­ter plan, his hand forced by the fast-spread­ing vari­ant, whose prop­er­ties are not yet ful­ly un­der­stood by sci­en­tists. Yet his mes­sage was clear that the win­ter hol­i­days could be close to nor­mal for the vac­ci­nat­ed while po­ten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous for the un­vac­ci­nat­ed.

His pleas are not po­lit­i­cal, he em­pha­sized. He not­ed that for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has got­ten his boost­er shot, and he said it’s Amer­i­cans’ “pa­tri­ot­ic du­ty” to get vac­ci­nat­ed.

“It’s the on­ly re­spon­si­ble thing to do,” the pres­i­dent said. “Omi­cron is se­ri­ous and po­ten­tial­ly dead­ly busi­ness for un­vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple.”

Biden chas­tised so­cial me­dia and peo­ple on ca­ble TV who have made mis­lead­ing state­ments to dis­cour­age peo­ple from get­ting vac­ci­nat­ed.

The out­break from this lat­est strain of the coro­n­avirus has re­quired the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to get more ag­gres­sive in ad­dress­ing the wave of in­fec­tions, but Biden promised a weary na­tion that there would not be a mass lock­down of schools or busi­ness­es.

“I know you’re tired, and I know you’re frus­trat­ed. We all want this to be over. But we’re still in it,” Biden said. “We al­so have more tools than we had be­fore. We’re ready, we’ll get through this.”

Sci­en­tists don’t know every­thing about omi­cron yet, but they do know that vac­ci­na­tion should of­fer strong pro­tec­tion against se­vere ill­ness and death. The vari­ant has spread at such an alarm­ing rate since it was iden­ti­fied in South Africa about a month ago that the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion snapped in­to ac­tion to of­fer new tests and ad­di­tion­al aid. Still more is need­ed, some med­ical ex­perts said.

A cor­ner­stone of the plan is for the gov­ern­ment to pur­chase 500 mil­lion coro­n­avirus rapid tests for free ship­ment to Amer­i­cans start­ing in Jan­u­ary. Peo­ple will use a new web­site to or­der their tests, which will then be sent by U.S. mail at no charge. The 500 mil­lion could be in­creased, de­pend­ing on de­vel­op­ments.

It marks a ma­jor shift for Biden, who ear­li­er had called for many Amer­i­cans to pur­chase the hard-to-find tests on their own and then seek re­im­burse­ment from health in­sur­ance. For the first time, the U.S. gov­ern­ment will send free COVID-19 tests di­rect­ly to Amer­i­cans, af­ter more than a year of urg­ing by pub­lic health ex­perts.

Ex­perts had crit­i­cized Biden’s ini­tial buy-first, get-paid-lat­er ap­proach as un­wieldy and warned that the U.S. would face an­oth­er round of test­ing prob­lems at a crit­i­cal time. Test­ing ad­vo­cates point to na­tions in­clud­ing the U.K. and Ger­many, which have dis­trib­uted bil­lions of tests to the pub­lic and rec­om­mend peo­ple test them­selves twice a week.

The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment will al­so es­tab­lish new test­ing sites and use the De­fense Pro­duc­tion Act to help man­u­fac­ture more tests. The first new fed­er­al­ly sup­port­ed test­ing site will open in New York this week. The new sites will add to 20,000 al­ready avail­able. White House of­fi­cials said they’re work­ing with Google so that peo­ple will be able to find them by search­ing “free COVID test near me.”

Still, Biden’s test­ing surge would need to be sup­port­ed by a fur­ther jump in pro­duc­tion for all Amer­i­cans to test at the rec­om­mend­ed rate of twice week­ly. The U.S. would need 2.3 bil­lion tests per month for every­one 12 and old­er to do that, ac­cord­ing to the non­prof­it Kaiser Fam­i­ly Foun­da­tion. That’s near­ly five times the half-bil­lion tests Biden will de­ploy.

Cur­rent­ly, the U.S. can con­duct about 600 mil­lion tests per month, with home tests ac­count­ing for about half, ac­cord­ing to re­searchers from Ari­zona State Uni­ver­si­ty.

In an­oth­er prong to Biden’s amped-up plan, he is pre­pared to de­ploy an ad­di­tion­al 1,000 troops with med­ical skills to as­sist hos­pi­tals buck­ling un­der the virus surge. Al­so, he is im­me­di­ate­ly send­ing fed­er­al med­ical per­son­nel to Michi­gan, In­di­ana, Wis­con­sin, Ari­zona, New Hamp­shire and Ver­mont. And there are plans to ready ad­di­tion­al ven­ti­la­tors and pro­tec­tive equip­ment from the na­tion­al stock­pile, ex­pand­ing hos­pi­tal re­sources.

As a back­stop, the Fed­er­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency will de­ploy hun­dreds of am­bu­lances and para­medic teams so that if one hos­pi­tal fills up, it can trans­port pa­tients to open beds in an­oth­er. Am­bu­lances are al­ready head­ed to New York and Maine, and para­medic teams are go­ing to New Hamp­shire, Ver­mont and Ari­zona.

But vac­ci­na­tion re­mains the main de­fense, since it can head off dis­ease in the first place. The gov­ern­ment will sup­port mul­ti­ple vac­ci­na­tion sites and pro­vide hun­dreds of per­son­nel to ad­min­is­ter shots. New rules will make it eas­i­er for phar­ma­cists to work across state lines to ad­min­is­ter a broad­er range of shots.

Biden said in re­sponse to a ques­tion that he may lift the South­ern Africa trav­el ban that was im­posed to de­lay omi­cron from reach­ing the U.S.

Some promi­nent ex­perts said that Biden’s new ac­tions are a step in the right di­rec­tion but he hasn’t gone far enough, giv­en the risks of in­fec­tions and hos­pi­tals be­ing over­whelmed.

“I don’t know that the mea­sures be­ing pro­posed are go­ing to be ad­e­quate,” said Dr. Pe­ter Hotez, dean of the Na­tion­al School of Trop­i­cal Med­i­cine at Bay­lor Col­lege of Med­i­cine in Hous­ton.

Hotez said the gov­ern­ment may need to au­tho­rize a sec­ond boost­er shot for health care work­ers to pre­vent in­fec­tions that would side­line clin­i­cians when all hands are need­ed.

Dr. Er­ic Topol, pro­fes­sor of mol­e­c­u­lar med­i­cine at Scripps Re­search in La Jol­la, Cal­i­for­nia, said the ad­min­is­tra­tion “fi­nal­ly sees the light” with Biden’s plan to ship 500 mil­lion tests, but “we need to pull out all the stops, and we’re not do­ing that still.”

“We don’t have con­trol of this pan­dem­ic here,” said Topol.

He said the gov­ern­ment could re­de­fine “ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed” as three shots in­stead of two of the Pfiz­er and Mod­er­na vac­cines, Biden could or­der a ban on air trav­el by peo­ple who are not ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, and the gov­ern­ment could use its au­thor­i­ty to ramp up pro­duc­tion of high qual­i­ty masks for free dis­tri­b­u­tion.

“There’s a lack of bold­ness,” Topol said. “I am dis­ap­point­ed.”

Sci­en­tists say omi­cron spreads even more eas­i­ly than oth­er coro­n­avirus strains, in­clud­ing delta. It ac­count­ed for near­ly three-quar­ters of new U.S. in­fec­tions last week.

Un­der­scor­ing the reach of the virus, the White House said late Mon­day that Biden had been in close con­tact with a staff mem­ber who lat­er test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19. The staffer spent about 30 min­utes around the pres­i­dent on Air Force One on Fri­day. The staffer, who was ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed and boost­ed, test­ed pos­i­tive Mon­day, White House press sec­re­tary Jen Psa­ki said.

Psa­ki said Biden has test­ed neg­a­tive twice since Sun­day and will test again on Wednes­day. He cleared his throat sev­er­al times at Tues­day’s event but spoke firm­ly and ap­peared fine.

In New York City, near­ly 42,600 peo­ple city­wide test­ed pos­i­tive from Wednes­day through Sat­ur­day — com­pared with few­er than 35,800 in the en­tire month of No­vem­ber. The city has nev­er had so many peo­ple test pos­i­tive in such a short pe­ri­od of time since test­ing be­came wide­ly avail­able.

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As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Matthew Per­rone, Dar­lene Su­perville and Zeke Miller con­tributed to this re­port.