WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – The U.S. The U.S. Postal Service began shipping at-home rapid COVID-19 testing free of charge after millions placed orders through its new website. This was in response to the nationwide rise in Omicron cases.

According to Jeffrey Zients, White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator, the federal government now has more than tens of million of testing materials and sent them out Thursday.

As the Omicron variant, which is highly transmissible, began subsiding in certain states, the push for free tests and best-protective protection masks to be available to Americans has begun.

According to the CDC’s head, U.S. COVID-19 daily cases fell by about 5% over the week. This was especially true in those areas where there has been an earlier surge like New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. The average daily number of cases was 744,600 per day over the seven-day period.

Rochelle Wilensky, Director at CDC said that in some areas of the country the Omicron variant is causing a decline in the daily number of cases. “The spike in cases occurred at different times in different areas and there may be high numbers of cases in other parts of the country over the next few days.”

She said that daily COVID-19 hospitalizations fell by 1% to 21,000 in the last seven days. Daily deaths were at over 1,700 each day.

Walensky stated that the agency wanted to change its COVID-19 vaccine language to help Americans be more up-to-date by giving a booster dose when necessary, but didn’t say if it had changed its definition of “fully vaccinated”.

She stated that Omicron-based vaccines are more effective for hospitalization and protection against infection than those who have been vaccinated.