President Joe Biden told the public on Tuesday that the federal government is ready to deal with the growing COVID-19 health crisis, which is being fueled by the highly contagious omicron variant. This is a huge rise in infections caused by the highly contagious variant.

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were meeting with the White House COVID-19 response team, and Biden told the country again to get vaccinated. He also told people to wear masks in public to keep the coronavirus from spreading.

“We can protect people from getting very sick because of omicron if people choose to use the tools,” Biden said. The year 2022 is going to be a good one, but for God’s sake, use what you can.

Monday was the first time that the U.S. had a new coronavirus case for the first time. Because of backlogs from the holiday weekend, the total of 1.08 million was likely to be even higher. It was a lot more than the previous record of 591,000 set Thursday.

By 9:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday, there had been another 859,245 new cases of the virus.

The U.S. has been getting about 550,000 new infections a day over the last week.

Many people across the country are very positive about their tests, which means that testing capacity is way too low and many people’s estimates are way off.

There has been a huge rise in infections recently, which is straining hospitals, making flights cancelled because of a lack of crew members, and making thousands of schools cancel plans to start in-person teaching again, among other things.

Biden said that the US has enough vaccines and booster shots for everyone in the country, but 35 million adults haven’t had them yet. A COVID treatment pill from Pfizer is now being bought for 20 million instead of 10 million. He also said that schools should stay open.

Vaccinations, on the other hand, are still the best way to protect against the virus, even though omicron has gotten better at causing new infections.

In Biden’s words: “You can still get COVID, but it is very unlikely that you will get very sick.” If you have been vaccinated and boosted, you are very safe.” Be worried about omicron, but don’t be alarmed by it. Isn’t it bad that you haven’t been vaccinated? You’ll get very sick in many cases.

Before the new year, Biden spent $137 million to make more at-home tests, which are still a problem for Americans who have been living in a pandemic for nearly two years.

Home-testing will get better as supplies get replenished at drug stores and online sites, the president said. This is what he said: The government is also setting up a website, which will open this month, for people to get free tests by mail.

President Joe Biden said that the number of federal testing sites has grown in the last two weeks, and that information about where to get COVID tests can be found by searching online for “COVID tests near me.” He said that testing in general was still “frustrating.” It’s hard for me to believe, but we’re making progress.