The Biden administration estimates that the testing market will remain stable until the early summer, but rapidly falling demand for once-popular at-home Covid-19 tests is leading some manufacturers to cut back.

“If we get to a point where companies really are turning off lines or laying off people — are not making investments in the Covid test market — and we have another surge, then we will not be ready to go,” Tom Inglesby, White House senior adviser for Covid response, told POLITICO. “We will be in a situation that is potentially much worse than what we had with Omicron.”…

Scott Becker, the CEO of the Association of Public Health Laboratories, said that the U.S. is repeating the same mistakes it made last summer when demand for testing plummeted and test manufacturers scaled back production.

“It’s like we’ve learned absolutely nothing as a system during this pandemic,” Becker said. “I have no reason to believe that wouldn’t happen again because they don’t have the demand.”