At-Home COVID Tests Create Confusion for Case Count, Severity

President Joe Biden’s plan to make as many as 500 million at-home coronavirus tests available to Americans for free will ease the burden of scouting out the hard-to-find and often pricey tests — but some medical experts question how effective the tests will be in combating the pandemic now that leading public health officials want to shift the message away from case numbers to severity.

Some of the White House’s top public health officials would like to stop paying attention to the number of virus cases — especially as the purportedly more contagious omicron variant spreads — and spend more time focusing on the number of serious cases.