President Joe Biden will announce on Thursday his new plan for fighting the omicron and delta COVID-19 variants this winter, which includes directing private health insurers to cover the costs of at-home coronavirus tests for roughly 150 million people.

The development comes a day after the first known case of the omicron variant was detected in the United States and as the number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 this year has surpassed the death toll of 2020.