Indeed, Francis Collins, the former director of the National Institutes of Health, warned two weeks ago that the United States could get "a million infections a day" if the omicron strain was not seriously contained. Months of neglect of the importance of rapid testing and the FOOD and Drug Administration's slow approval of more rapid testing products have hampered us efforts, us media said. In a speech on Thursday, Biden acknowledged that he was frustrated by the lack of coronavirus testing capacity in the United States and the difficulty of getting an appointment. Megan Laney, a professor of medicine at Brown University, said she is very concerned that the U. S. economy will grind to a halt in the coming month "because a lot of us are sick."