Biden's Original COVID Plan Falls Short on Testing, Mask Mandates as Omicron Spreads

Before becoming president, Joe Biden released a seven-point plan aimed at bringing COVID-19 under control and said he would use it to "get our country back on track."

The White House in September introduced a revised plan to address concerns that developed or persisted during Biden's first few months in office. While many of the agenda items included within Biden's initial plan are either in progress or have already been completed, some goals remain unmet.

Biden was quick to reinstate the country's ties to the World Health Organization and ramp up production of vaccines and personal protective equipment, but COVID-19 testing has remained a sticking point, with costs of at-home tests still considered high in comparison to other countries. Biden's early ambition to encourage all state leaders to implement mask mandates also fell short, with a handful of states never introducing—and in some cases working to block—these kinds of mandates.

As the U.S. prepares to enter its third year in the battle against COVID-19 with the Omicron variant this week becoming the country's dominant virus variant, Newsweek takes a look at the progress Biden's administration has made thus far on his initial plan for tackling the pandemic.

Testing

The first step then-candidate Biden outlined in his COVID-19 plan was aimed at the testing and virus tracing "fiasco" that he said former President Donald Trump left Biden's incoming administration to address. Encompassed within this plan was a goal to "double" the volume of drive-thru testing sites, a measurement that health experts told PolitiFact was difficult to quantify. Though experts have said there is no cohesive data comparing the number of COVID-19 testing sites during Biden's first year in office with Trump's last, health experts told PolitiFact that Biden did increase access to COVID-19 testing but noted there remains room for improvement.

Part of the way Biden's administration enhanced testing access was by investing in rapid and at-home tests, the second goal outlined within his first agenda item. But sufficient supplies of at-home tests have not been consistently available in every part of the country, and the recent spread of the Omicron variant is again threatening supplies in pharmacies, according to The New York Times. Not all testing options are free of charge, though Biden's administration announced a plan earlier this month for Americans with private insurance to get reimbursed for the costs associated with at-home testing.

Biden also said in the plan that he intended to create a Pandemic Testing Board to be led by the White House's COVID-19 response coordinator, which he did by executive order the day after his inauguration. That executive order also called upon the heads of the Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Education, and Labor departments to create a plan for a U.S. Public Health Job Corps, another agenda item outlined in the president's initial strategy for taking action against COVID-19.

Personal Protective Equipment

Biden said he would "take responsibility" for personal protective equipment to ensure it was available for the duration of the pandemic. He said in his plan that he would do so by using the Defense Production Act and ordered a review of existing supplies in January. A few months later, his administration introduced changes to the Defense Production Act Loan Program to direct funds toward the pandemic response, according to NBC News, and the force behind the Defense Production Act has also been directed at boosting vaccine production.

'Evidence-Based' Pandemic Guidance

Biden described social distancing as a "dial" rather than a "light switch" in his original COVID-19 plan and said he intended to provide Americans and institutions with guidelines for how to proceed amidst the ongoing pandemic. Biden said he intended to require the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) "to provide specific, evidence-based guidance" to schools, businesses, restaurants and more that would enable decision-making based on the level of virus transmission in any given region. The CDC does provide a virus data tracker on its website and has been updating guidance for schools throughout the year in response to infection fluctuations, with additional guidelines for restaurants and businesses also available online.

In addition to pandemic guidance, Biden said in his plan that he aspired to secure funding to support small businesses, schools and local governments to assist with operational costs amid the pandemic and prevent layoffs. The American Rescue Plan Act that Biden signed into law in March secured these goals.

Virus Treatment and Vaccine Distribution

Biden said he planned to invest billions of dollars to ensure every American would have access to a free COVID-19 vaccine regardless of whether they have health insurance. When the first vaccines received emergency use approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration during Trump's final weeks in office, they were made available to qualifying Americans at no cost to the recipients. Biden has continued providing free vaccines, though his administration received criticism in the early days of the vaccine rollout as demand for the shots exceeded the number of doses initially available.

Biden has also stuck to the three "principles" that he said in his plan "should guide us" in combatting the politicization of vaccines, including making sure scientists were "in charge of all decisions on safety and efficacy" when it came to vaccination approval. He said he would publicly release any clinical data gathered on approved vaccines and allow officials to speak "uncensored" before members of Congress.

Another element of Biden's strategy for vaccine and treatment distribution noted the possibility of price-gouging and said the administration would seek to prevent this occurrence. Though Biden has said free at-home COVID-19 testing is on the way, Americans currently pay more for these tests than people do in the United Kingdom.

In addition to his battle with the pandemic, Biden is also striving to reduce prescription drug costs through his proposed Build Back Better Act. Though Biden's administration and most congressional Democrats had hoped to pass the bill before the end of 2021, heated debate surrounding the legislation has delayed its passage.

Protecting High-Risk Americans

Biden said he planned to create a COVID-19 Racial and Ethnic Disparities Task Force and a national database where Americans could identify the rates at which COVID-19 was spreading in their area. He issued an executive order the day after his inauguration to create the task force, which was initially proposed by then-Senator Kamala Harris of California. The 12 individuals chosen for the task force were introduced by Biden and Harris on February 10, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health.

In a January summary outlining the administration's national strategy for combatting the pandemic, Biden directed the CDC to "maintain a public dashboard tracking COVID-19 cases at the county level, so that Americans can gauge the level of transmission in their own communities to make their own informed choices." The CDC now has that county data tracker available on its website. The agency says it updates the tracker every evening.

Identifying Future Pandemic Threats

The penultimate focus of Biden's COVID-19 response plan said his administration would "rebuild" and "expand" efforts to "predict, prevent, and mitigate" future pandemic threats, which Biden described at the time as being "dismantled" by his predecessor. Two of those objectives involved rejoining the World Health Organization and restoring the White House National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense launched under former President Barack Obama, both of which Biden did shortly after taking office.

Biden's plan additionally said his administration would revamp a program under the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) known as PREDICT, which previously kept track of potentially dangerous viruses before lapsing in 2019. But before the presidential election, the USAID announced in September 2020 that it was launching a five-year project called STOP Spillover that would similarly "anticipate and address threats posed by the emerging zoonotic diseases that pose the greatest risk of jumping from animals to humans."

Biden also said he intended to increase the number of "disease detectives" at the CDC so the U.S. would have "eyes and ears on the ground" to watch for threatening outbreaks in the future. In May, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said some funding from the American Rescue Plan was going toward boosting the agency's number of Epidemic Intelligence Service Officers to "respond to local outbreaks and help curb the pandemic."

Nationwide Mask Mandate

Then-candidate Biden said he intended to encourage every governor and local leader to implement mask mandates to prevent further spread of the virus. While some state and local leaders have lifted and reimposed mask mandates based on the fluctuation of COVID-19 infections in their areas, others have refused Biden's call to implement mandates altogether. According to AARP, 11 state leaders have never introduced mask mandates over the course of the pandemic, and only eight states were imposing mask requirements for all residents in indoor settings as of mid-December.

Though there are states without mask mandates, Biden's administration did issue mask requirements that apply across the country to people on federal property and those using public transportation.

The wider debate about mask mandates has been another point of criticism for Biden's administration during his first year in office. As the number of COVID-19 cases began to decline heading into the summer months, the CDC relaxed its mask guidance for fully vaccinated Americans, a decision the agency walked back amid surging infections of the Delta variant about two months later.

Newsweek reached out to the White House for comment and will update this article with any response.