President Biden plans to order an additional 500 million more Covid-19 tests in addition to the first 500 million he’s in the process of ordering now, a White House official confirms. 

These will be ordered after they obtain the first half a billion he’s promised, which have not yet been secured. 

An HHS official testified this week that they have bought about 50 million so far and are in the process of signing contracts for the rest. 

More than 151,000 Americans were in the hospital with Covid-19 nationwide on Wednesday, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services. And the US averaged more than 747,260 new Covid-19 cases daily over the last week, according to Johns Hopkins University data.