{"id":43538,"date":"2022-01-03T13:10:50","date_gmt":"2022-01-03T21:10:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=43538"},"modified":"2022-01-03T16:11:30","modified_gmt":"2022-01-04T00:11:30","slug":"gop-senators-press-for-answers-on-testing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=43538","title":{"rendered":"GOP senators press for answers on testing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two top Republican senators are calling on the Biden administration to provide answers about how it has spent billions of dollars in testing funds for COVID-19 amid shortages in such tests across the country.<\/p>\n

Pharmacies sold out of rapid tests, and long lines at testing sites have sprung up in the last month amid holiday travel and a massive surge in cases fueled by the omicron variant.<\/p>\n

Sen.\u00a0Richard Burr\u00a0(N.C.), the top Republican on the Senate\u2019s health committee, and Sen.\u00a0Roy Blunt\u00a0(Mo.), the top Republican on the Appropriations health subcommittee,\u00a0wrote to Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra<\/a>\u00a0to ask why there are shortages despite the billions\u00a0approved by Congress since 2020 that were specified for increased testing.<\/p>\n

The senators pointed to $34.8 billion for testing across five bipartisan packages in 2020, and another $47.8 billion from Democrats\u2019 American Rescue Plan in 2021.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith over $82.6 billion specifically appropriated for testing, and flexibility within the\u00a0Department to allocate additional funds from COVID-19 supplemental bills or annual\u00a0appropriations if necessary, it is unclear to us why we are facing such dire circumstances now,\u201d the senators write. \u201cIt does not appear to be because of lack of funding, but a more fundamental lack of strategy and a failure to anticipate future testing needs by the administration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Background:<\/strong>\u00a0Late last month, the administration\u00a0took action on that front, announcing the purchase of 500 million rapid tests to be made available for free to Americans who order them online. The tests are set to become\u00a0available this month. Experts have pushed for further action given the U.S. population of 330 million, saying that 500 million tests\u00a0are far from enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two top Republican senators are calling...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43538"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43539,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43538\/revisions\/43539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}