White House shifts strategy to emphasize more testing to counter COVID spread

WASHINGTON — President Biden, confronting a worrisome new coronavirus variant and a potential winter surge, laid out a pandemic strategy on Thursday that includes hundreds of vaccination sites, boosters for all adults, new testing requirements for international travelers and free at-home tests.

After nearly a year of pushing vaccination as the way out of the pandemic, Mr. Biden has been unable to overcome resistance to the shots in red states and rural areas. His new strategy shifts away from a near-singular focus on vaccination and places a fresh emphasis on testing — a tacit acknowledgment by the White House that vaccination is not enough to end the worst public health crisis in a century. ...

Conquering the pandemic — or at least bringing it under control — is by far Mr. Biden’s most daunting task as president, and it is all the more complicated because it has become so divisive. The president struck a theme of unity in his remarks, urging Americans to come together around his plan.

Yet even as the president spoke, Republicans on Capitol Hill threatened to shut down the government over his vaccine rules for large employers. Vaccine mandates have been held up in court, and Mr. Biden emphasized that his current plan does not “expand or add to those mandates” and “doesn’t include shutdowns or lockdowns.”

Experts agree that widespread vaccination is critical to controlling the pandemic. But they also argue that masks and testing are essential, and say that the testing will become even more urgent if the Omicron variant is found to evade protection from vaccines, which has not yet been established. The president, they say, faces a huge challenge.