White House signals new COVID-19 measures coming for unvaccinated Americans

President Biden will announce on Thursday new steps in his administration’s COVID-19 response that involves testing, mandates, and school measures depending on a person’s vaccination status, the White House said.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Wednesday that the new components would affect people across the country.

“There are six steps the president’s announcing, there will be new components,” Psaki said. “Some of that will be related to access to testing, some will be related to mandates, some will be related to how we ensure kids will be protected in schools.” 

The president indicated last week, following the jobs report, that his administration is looking for ways to make it safer for kids to return to school and for workers to return to the office.

Psaki said more will be previewed Thursday when the components are finalized.

“There will be new components that sure, will of course impact people across the country, but we’re also all working together to get the virus under control, to return to our normal lives,” she added. 

Biden’s upcoming remarks comes as cases and hospitalizations have increased in areas around the country, in large part due to the highly contagious delta variant.

When asked if the new steps will affect Americans’ lives, Psaki said, “it depends on if you’re vaccinated or not.”