Biden health team weighs new mask distribution plan

Biden administration health officials are weighing whether to offer high quality masks, which could include KN95 or N95s, to all Americans, as the Omicron variant fuels a record surge of Covid-19, three people with knowledge of the deliberations told POLITICO…

But some administration officials, led by Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, have advocated in the last week for launching an initiative to hand out better-quality masks to all who want them, said two people with knowledge of the deliberations, who were not authorized to speak publicly.

The White House has also fielded increasingly urgent pleas from outside allies such as Céline Gounder, an infectious disease specialist and former Covid-19 adviser to the Biden transition, to set up such a program. Within the last week, a group of health experts — including three former advisers to the Biden transition — publicly outlined a new Covid-19 response strategy that included making N95s or KN95s “readily available to all U.S. residents for free or very low cost.”