Search for a COVID-19 test means sold-out signs, long lines

NEW YORK (AP) — President Joe Biden promised to distribute hundreds of millions of free COVID-19 tests and to open more testing sites to fight surging infections, but the stepped-up efforts will not come in time for people who want to find out if they are infected before the holidays.

Americans have been searching drugstores for scarce home tests or waiting hours in chilly temperatures at testing facilities across the country.

“Not everyone can take three hours off work to get tested, but it feels like it’s the only thing we have the power to do,” said Jordan Thomas, who waited nearly four hours for a test this week in the Brooklyn borough of New York City.

In Atlanta, drugstores ran out of home tests, and police shut down testing sites as traffic backed up a half-mile or more. A drive-thru testing site in Columbia, South Carolina, that for months had quicker lines than some nearby Chick-fil-A restaurants had waits of an hour or more days before Christmas. Workers warned that results could take longer than the typical 24 to 36 hours.

Fueling the surging demand for tests is a mix of factors, including families seeking to keep holiday gatherings safe and people needing to prove they are virus-free for travel, work or school. Adding to the pressure is the extra-contagious omicron variant, which has a multiplying effect on the number of people seeking tests after being exposed to an infected person.

In the United States, infections average around 149,000 a day, up from 75,000 a day at the start of November.

“The rise in infections is pretty dramatic,” said Gigi Gronvall, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who has tracked COVID-19 testing efforts during the pandemic.

Testing can help ensure safety at gatherings, even if people do not...