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For the first time, people across the U.S. can log on to a government website and order free, at-home COVID-19 tests. But the White House push may do little to ease the omicron surge, and experts say Washington will have to do a lot more to fix the country’s long-troubled testing system. The website, COVIDTests.gov, allows people to order four at-home tests per household, regardless of citizenship status, and have them delivered by mail. But the tests won’t arrive for seven to 12 days, after omicron cases are expected to peak in many parts of the country. The White House also announced Wednesday that it will begin making 400 million N95 masks available for free at  pharmacies and community health centers. Both initiatives represent the kind of mass government investments long seen in parts of Europe and Asia, but delayed in the U.S.

The House of Representatives’ Committee on Public Accounts is investigating the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control for paying part of the N9bn it received as special intervention fund from the Federal Government on COVID-19 into personal accounts of some members of its staff. The committee had on Friday grilled the Director-General of the NCDC, Dr Ifedayo Adetifa, over the centre’s spending. Adetifa told the committee that the Federal Government, between March and December 2020, released to the NCDC N620m; March 2020 to March 2021, N5bn; and January 2021 to September 2021, N3.49bn. Chairman of the committee, Oluwole Oke, however, raised the alarm over some irregularities in the disbursement of the funds, noting that some of the money were paid into the private accounts of some staff members. Oke cited two examples in 2020 where the sum of N3.95m was paid to one Kemisalo Odimayo for the establishment of an additional sample collection space and another sum of N792,000 paid t...