First published at 19:19 UTC on December 8th, 2021.
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Public health experts were appalled Monday to hear an idea that many of them consider vital — making at-home rapid antigen tests for Covid-19 free for all Americans — dismissed as ridiculous by President Joe Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki.
In an oddly combative exchange with Mara Liasson of NPR, who asked why the United States chose not to emulate countries like the United Kingdom, which sends packs of seven free rapid tests to anyone who asks for them, the president’s spokesperson first suggested, wrongly, that the tests used in other countries might not work. Psaki then boasted that the U.S. had gotten some retailers to lower costs and would soon require private insurance companies to start reimbursing clients who buy rapid tests.
Experts who have pushed for the Biden administration to flood the country with free rapid tests, as a way of finding asymptomatic cases to slow the spread of the virus, were particularly outraged that the president’s spokesperson suggested that the initiative would be too costly.
“By dismissing the idea of sending every American a rapid test due to cost, she seems to imply that the insurance reimbursement plan won’t come close to doing that,” Jennifer Nuzzo, lead epidemiologist for the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, commented on Twitter. Nuzzo had complained to The Hill earlier this week that the administration was placing “barriers” in front of people by not simply buying tests for all Americans.
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