Jeff Mason

WASHINGTON (Reuters] – Under the new pandemic measures that President Joe Biden announced on Thursday, U.S. officials have said that private insurers will be required to reimburse their customers for COVID-19 home tests.

A senior official in the administration told reporters that reimbursement would benefit approximately 150 million Americans with private insurance before Biden made his announcement.

According to the White House, guidance regarding the topic will be provided by the Treasury Department and Health and Human Services Department before January 15.

According to the official, retroactive application of this rule is not possible and it does not affect public-health insurance plan members. To help those without insurance or who don’t have any insurance, the administration will distribute 50 million test kits to remote clinics.

Biden will visit the National Institutes of Health on Thursday to outline the strategy of his administration to combat the winter pandemic. He plans to highlight the efforts of his administration to boost Americans’ access to COVID-19 boosters and vaccines as well as steps taken to increase availability at pharmacies.

As the COVID-19 Omicron variant poses new risks to the nation and world, the government is attempting to increase testing. The fear of this variant has roiled financial markets, and raised questions about how fast the world economy will recover from the ongoing pandemic.

In the United States, more than 750,000 people have been killed by COVID-19. Biden has failed to stop the spread of the virus in part because there is vaccine resistance among large swathes of Americans.

In its winter plan, the White House also addresses travel.

The United States will soon require all international travel to the United States for COVID-19 testing within one day after departure. This applies regardless of whether or not they have been immunized. The March 18 deadline for mask requirements will apply to all public transport vehicles, including airplanes and trains. [ID:nL1N2SM3FR

Biden also will press companies to require employees to be vaccinated or tested regularly despite legal setbacks to his efforts to force employers to do so.

“The president will call on businesses to move forward expeditiously with requiring their workers to get vaccinated or tested weekly. This is especially important given the Omicron variant,” the White House said in a statement.

In early November a federal appeals court temporarily blocked Biden’s workplace vaccine-or-testing mandate for businesses with at least 100 employees.