Millions of Americans ordered free COVID-19 tests from President Biden’s new website this week and the initial kits began to reach households Friday, the White House said.

A glitch affecting apartment dwellers is “very limited” and being resolved, White House officials said.

The U.S. Postal Service is delivering the tests as Americans grapple with limited screening options amid the omicron surge. Each household is entitled to request four tests for free delivery from the website, which went live on Tuesday.

“Demand has been high in the first few days around the country. Households around the country are clearly ordering tests and completing the process quickly,” said White House COVID-19 Coordinator Jeff Zients. “The website is working smoothly. We already have millions of completed orders through the website and those numbers keep increasing each and every day.”

Mr. Zients said the administration is aware of a glitch in which some apartment residents are not able to request tests if someone else in their building requested tests first. He said the problem applies to a small subset of apartment residents.

“Almost every resident in an apartment is able to order a test. U.S. Postal Service has seen a very limited number of cases where addresses that are not registered as multi-unit buildings, within its database, and they are working to fix that issue and are helping people through that process. But I want to emphasize it is a very, very small percentage of people who live in apartment buildings. We will make sure that those people get tests for free.”

He said people who run into trouble can call a hotline to get the issue fixed.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the U.S. is averaging about 745,000 cases per day, a 5% decrease from the prior week.

Hospitalizations remain at a record 160,000 while deaths have risen to 1,700 per day, though that’s far below the 3,000-plus pandemic peak in January 2021.

“In some parts of the country, we are seeing the number of daily cases caused by the omicron variant beginning to decline,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said. “But, as we have seen during other phases of the pandemic, the surge in cases started at different times in different regions and [we] may continue to see high case counts in some areas of the country in the days and weeks ahead.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the best-case scenario is that the decline in cases will continue to a baseline level of “adequate control.”

“Namely, it’s not disruptive of what we do,” he said, as scientists view 2022 as a transition year in treating the virus as a manageable disease like influenza.

Dr. Fauci said they also have to be prepared for the worst-case scenario.

“And that is we do get down to a level that we would say would be adequate control but we’re faced with another surprise, with a variant that is so different that it eludes the accumulation of immune protection that we’ve gotten from vaccinations and from prior infections,” Dr. Fauci said. “I hope that doesn’t happen. I can’t give you statistics of what the chance [is] that happens, but we have to be prepared for it. So we hope for the best and prepare for the worst.”

Mr. Zients insisted the U.S. will be better prepared to weather whatever happens, citing plentiful vaccines and groundbreaking drugs that are coming online.

“We have that tool kit and we’ll continue to expand that toolkit to make sure that we can deal with any scenario,” he said.

For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.

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A federal judge issued an order Friday halting President Biden’s order that all federal employees get the coronavirus vaccine or risk losing their jobs, saying the president overstepped the bounds of his powers.

Judge Jeffrey Vincent Brown, a Trump appointee to the bench in Texas, issued a nationwide injunction.

His ruling follows a decision last week by the Supreme Court that halted yet another Biden COVID-19 vaccine mandate for large businesses.

Of four major vaccine mandates the Biden administration has promulgated, three are now blocked.

Judge Brown said the case involving federal workers isn’t about whether people should get vaccinated, saying, “The court believes they should.” Nor is it about whether the federal government as a whole could require its employees to get the shots.

Instead, it is about whether Mr. Biden, acting as chief executive, can issue an order that millions of people undergo a medical procedure.

“That, under the current state of the law as just recently expressed by the Supreme Court, is a bridge too far,” the judge ruled.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki, reacting soon after the decision, said it would be up to the Justice Department to decide next steps, but she suggested the idea of the mandate has already worked.

“First, let me update you that 98% of federal workers are vaccinated. That is a remarkable number,” she said.

She also said the administration was “confident in our legal authority here.”

In arguing its case to Judge Brown, the Biden administration had pointed to several sections of the law that said the president gets to set rules and regulations governing federal workers’ conduct and conditions of employment. Justice Department lawyers said getting vaccinated falls under on-the-job conduct.

Feds for Medical Freedom, the group that challenged the mandate in this case, argued that being vaccinated against the deadly virus wasn’t conduct but rather status. And even if it is judged to be conduct, it’s not “workplace” conduct.

Judge Brown agreed.

He said the Supreme Court’s ruling last week against the large-business mandate found that COVID is not an issue unique to the workplace, so a vaccine mandate can’t be shoehorned into an order regarding work conduct.

Judge Brown was racing to beat a Jan. 21 deadline, which was the earliest point at which any of the plaintiffs involved in the case might face discipline.

His order applies not just to the members of Feds for Medical Freedom but to all federal employees. Judge Brown said trying to draw a narrow injunction was impractical.

The four major vaccine mandates the Biden team imposed last year covered federal employees, federal contractors, workers at businesses with at least 100 employees, and medical workers who are funded by federal money through Medicare or Medicaid.
Of those, only the health care worker mandate remains in place, covering about 10 million people.

The Supreme Court last week ruled Congress did give the administration power in the medical area.

But the justices blocked the large-business mandate from taking effect. The federal contractor mandate was blocked by lower courts.

• Tom Howell Jr. contributed to this article.

For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.

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Three weeks alone in a hotel room is hardly an ideal setting for a snowboarder preparing for the Olympics.

Patrizia Kummer, a Swiss athlete who won a gold medal at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, is unvaccinated against the coronavirus, so she is spending 21 days in isolation in China before the Winter Games begin in Beijing on Feb. 4.

Even though vaccine rules are strict for the upcoming Olympics, a few unvaccinated athletes will still be taking part.

Kummer said she doesn’t want to influence anyone else’s views on vaccination and thinks the quarantine requirement is fair, but also declined to discuss her “personal reasons” for refusing a vaccine.

“I had a bunch of reasons for the vaccine and a bunch of reasons against the vaccine, and in the end, it was like, ‘No, I can’t do it,’” she said on a video call from her Beijing hotel room, adding she is “not in a risk group.”

The Beijing Games are being held under severe protocols as part of China’s “ Zero COVID ” policy. The government has locked down several cities in the lead up to the Olympics because of the presence of only a handful of cases of the highly contagious omicron variant that has surged throughout the world.

The coronavirus can cause disease and death in younger people, including athletes. Scientists believe vaccinating as many people as possible will help slow the virus’ spread, which will help in preventing the emergence of new variants and in building immunity more broadly in the population.

When Kummer competes on Feb. 8 in her third Olympics, she will have been in China for nearly a month.

Some countries have refused to select unvaccinated athletes for their Olympic teams. Other athletes have a choice between vaccination or the 21-day quarantine. A few will compete unvaccinated without quarantine after getting exemptions on medical or legal grounds. That includes some young Russian athletes who weren’t eligible for vaccines at home.

VACCINE OR QUARANTINE

Kummer is staying in a Holiday Inn in northern Beijing, far from the mountains where some Olympic events will be held. Food is brought to her door three times a day, there’s a stationary bike for exercise, and she brought a yoga mat, weights and fitness equipment.

When she’s not working out, Kummer visualizes riding the snowboard she has propped against the wall, streams TV shows or works on her plans to renovate a historic building back home in Switzerland.

That’s life in what the International Olympic Committee calls the “dedicated facility” for unvaccinated athletes waiting to enter the “closed loop” of the Beijing Olympics.

“I’m a minimalist, so I don’t need much to have a good living. I don’t need much to be happy. So that’s no problem,” Kummer said. “And I actually enjoy being by myself.”

Kummer thinks she’s the only unvaccinated athlete in quarantine, but doesn’t know for sure. The IOC declined to say whether there are others, saying only that “close to 100% of the residents of the Olympic and Paralympic Villages” will be vaccinated. Nearly 3,000 athletes are expected at the Beijing Games.

VACCINE MANDATES

Austrian snowboarder Claudia Riegler is in a stand-off with her Olympic team, which is threatening to leave her at home if she doesn’t get the vaccine.

Kummer and Riegler are friends who bonded on a long drive home through the Alps when they were both turned away from a World Cup race in Italy last month for being unvaccinated. They wanted to ask for quarantine rooms next door to each other in Beijing before Riegler’s dispute with her team became public, and they did an online fitness class together after Kummer arrived in China.

Austrian news agency APA reported that Riegler has until Sunday to get her first vaccine shot or be left off the team. The four-time Olympian doesn’t want to be vaccinated after having contracted the virus over the Christmas period, APA reported.

The United States and Canada imposed vaccine mandates last year for their Olympic teams. The Americans said all of their Winter Olympians will be vaccinated, as did other countries, including Britain, Sweden, France, Italy, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

EXEMPTIONS

A few unvaccinated athletes will be able to compete without quarantining.

The IOC said a panel chosen by the Olympic body and China will rule on exemptions for medical or legal reasons. Examples include people who are allergic to vaccine ingredients, or who take medicines which suppress the immune system. Olympic organizers use the laws in an athlete’s country of origin as a guide to decide on exemptions.

Russian officials have estimated seven athletes – including some figure skaters – will compete unvaccinated because they are under 18 and weren’t eligible for any vaccine at home until recently.

A version of the Sputnik vaccine received government approval in November for use in children between the ages of 12 and 17 but is not yet widely available. Russia doesn’t let people under 18 receive other vaccines.

In tennis, Novak Djokovic used a positive test dated in December as evidence he had recovered from the virus to get an exemption for the Australian Open while unvaccinated. He was eventually ordered to leave the country after a legal battle.

Evidence of a previous infection could be enough to get an exemption for the Beijing Olympics but IOC guidelines indicate that would work only if the athlete’s home country has ruled that infected people are “not eligible” for a vaccine. There is no indication anyone has applied for an exemption on those grounds.

Health, The New York Today