Kamala Harris says 'we are doing it, we are doing it' when grilled on why the Biden administration didn't send out 500 million free COVID tests sooner and she 'THINKS' deliveries will start next week

 Vice President Kamala Harris said Thursday she 'thinks' the Biden administration will send out 500 million COVID tests next week and fired back at accusations the White House should have started distributing them sooner in the midst of a huge nationwide shortage. 

'Shortly - they're going to go out shortly,' Harris said when asked on NBC's 'Today' show when the tests would finally start getting shipped to Americans, even though data suggests Omicron may have already peaked.

'They've been ordered. They've been ordered,' she said. Interviewer Craig Melvin pushed her for more information. 'I have to look at the current information. I think it's going to be by next week. But soon. Absolutely soon. And it is a matter of urgency for us,' she said. 

'Should we have done that sooner?' Melvin asked her. 'We are doing it,' Harris replied. 

'But should we have done it sooner,' he pressed again. 'We are doing it,' Harris responded. 

A White House official said Thursday that President Biden would announce Thursday that in addition to the 500 million tests 'that we are in the process of acquiring, he is directing his team to procure 500 million more tests to meet future demand.' 

It follows criticism of the administration for delaying the distribution of tests and being slow to sign the contracts while Americans were faced with retailers selling out of at-home kits and forced to wait on long lines at testing centers. 

Biden also announced on Thursday that he is deploying 1,000 military personnel to hospitals in six states - Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio and Rhode Island- to help deal with staff shortages. 

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'They're going to go out shortly,' said Vice President Kamala Harris when asked when the first of 500 million home covid tests would start getting shipped

Harris also rejected calls for a new approach to COVID, and continued to press Americans who aren't vaccinated to get their shots – following calls for change from a group of experts who served as Biden's covid advisors before he took office.

'Every day it is time for us to agree that there are things and tools that are available to us to slow this thing down,' Harris said. 'We are in the midst of a surge. That's where we are right now. And so right now, we know we still have a number of people that, that is in the millions of Americans who have not been vaccinated, and could be vaccinated, and we are urging them to get vaccinated because it will save their life.' 

The administration says the U.S. Postal Service will deliver the tests to Americans who request them. But the administration says it won't put up the web site until the tests are in hand.

DailyMail.com reported Wednesday that a company that got a $190 million contract for the tests doesn't manufacture tests, and got into the business of personal protective equipment only at the start of the pandemic. Its first business offering was a vodka bottle equipped with special programmable LED lights and a bluetooth connection. 

Another firm based in Texas is also warehousing tests, but not making them. It's largest government contract came last year and was for just $1 million. 

New data from the first US states hit by Omicron suggest their latest COVID surge has peaked and that cases could soon fall sharply.

Data from Johns Hopkins University shows that New York, New Jersey and Maryland have all seen seven day-average cases drop in recent days. Deaths have spiked by 20 per cent in a fortnight to around 1,820 a day, but still sit far below the peaks of winter 2020, even though more COVID infections are being recorded. 

In the Empire State, seven day average cases sat at 69,300 on January 12 - down from an all-time high of 74,400 on January 8.

In neighboring New Jersey, seven day average cases peaked at 31,090 on January 8. But Garden State cases have since dropped too, and sit at 25,060 as of January 12.

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People wait in a long line to get a COVID-19 test, Monday, Jan. 3, 2022, in North Miami, Fla. The administration announced the plans to ship tests amid the omicron wave. Many schools adopted 'test to return' policies after the holidays

Meanwhile, Maryland saw its seven day average cases peak at 13,300 on January 6, but they have since dropped down to 11,900 as of January 12.  

Over on the West Coast, Los Angeles has also seen a sharp drop in COVID-19 diagnoses after a recent record peak. LA County hit an all-time high of 52,200 cases on January 4. But on January 10, the most recent date for which figures are available, cases had slumped to just 9,300.

The shape of each area's peak mirrors infection curves seen in South Africa - where Omicron was first detected - as well as the United Kingdom, which was hit by rocketing new cases weeks before the US.

Both those countries have seen cases decline sharply in recent days, sparking hopes that the US will now follow suit.  

Overall, COVID numbers still remain high.  The US reached a record seven day case average of 786,416 cases on Wednesday. On Monday, an all-time high one day caseload of 1.485 million infections was recorded. 

But the meteoritic rise in case numbers is slowing - and has not translated to a similar increase in deaths.

New York and New Jersey were hit the hardest and fastest by Omicron last month when the variant first landed in the U.S. The neighboring states saw cases rise more than seven-fold in only a month, but the variant seems to be burning out. 

New daily cases in the Empire state have grown by 69 percent over the past two weeks, with the growth rate consistently slowing in recent days. New Jersey is experiencing a similar case growth of 67 percent over the past 14 days as well.

Maine has been facing a case surge for a long period of time, dating all the way back to October, but a recent surge in cases has slowed as well - with cases only up 37 percent over the past two weeks. Maryland is also recording a 56 percent jump in cases in recent weeks with growth shrinking in that state as well.  

All signs are pointing to this current surge peaking, though. Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, predicts that the variant will eventually spread to everyone in America in the near future before running out of people to infect and quickly declining.

A promising sign is coming out of Boston, Massachusetts, as well, with recent wastewater data showing a sharp, 40 percent decline in Covid prevalence in the city.  Other major cities like Chicago and Los Angeles have experienced flattening of cases in recent days as well.

Dr Ali Mokdad, also of the University of Washington, told the Associated Press this week that he also believes the same will occur, and that cases could even start rapidly declining soon.

'It's going to come down as fast as it went up,' Mokdad, who teaches health metrics at the school, said.

Dr Pavitra Roychoudhury is a bioinformatics expert at the University of Washington in Seattle. She told DailyMail.com that more tests than ever are coming back positive at the moment, and while it is overwhelming, the recent surge should peak soon.

'My understanding is that eventually there'll be enough people will infected that there'll be some sort of some sort of immunity that will be established,' she said.

'That will result in those case numbers plateauing, and then starting to turn down again... It can't come soon enough.' 

While deaths in the U.S. have taken a turn upwards during this period, up 20 percent over the past two weeks to 1,822 per day per Johns Hopkins University data, the Omicron variant may not be responsible.  Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), credited the recent uptick to the Delta variant, not Omicron.

While current new daily case figures are nearly four times the 200,000 case average from the peak of the Delta strain, daily death totals are still only half of the peak of Delta - showing how mild the variant is. 

The Indian-born strain only makes up around two percent of infections according to most recent data revealed by the agency - with Omicron making up 98 percent of cases. The CDC also released data on Wednesday showing the Omicron variant is 91 percent less likely to cause death that its predecessor, and half as likely to cause hospitalizations.

The U.S. also often follows trends in the UK. Across the pond, cases dropped for the seventh consecutive day on Thursday and cases are down 33 percent over the past week. In London, once the hardest struck city in the world by Omicron, suddenly is recording its lowest daily cases in a month, more signs the variant will quickly burn out in the future.

South Africa's sharp decline in Covid cases is continuing as well, down to 6,599 per day, a far fall from the surge's peak all the way back in late December.