Washington, US President Joe Biden has denied that his administration bungled its response to the emergence of the Omicron variant.
He told a TV network that "nobody" could have predicted it, BBC reported. His top adviser Anthony Fauci has said experts did foresee variants.
It comes a day after the White House unveiled plans to order 500 million at-home coronavirus tests amid a shortage.
There have been long waits for in-person tests as Christmas looms.
"I don't think it's a failure," BBC quoted Biden as saying in an interview with ABC News on Wednesday. "I think it's - you could argue that we should have known a year ago, six months ago, two months ago, a month ago."
One year ago, Biden lambasted a shortfall in Covid-19 testing under the Trump administration as "a travesty".
On Wednesday, New York City recorded nearly 29,000 new cases - a new single day record during the pandemic and a 30 per cent jump from the record set earlier this week.
Pressed by ABC on US Vice-President Kamala Harris' remarks to the Los Angeles Times last week that the White House did not see Delta or Omicron coming, Biden laughed.
"How did we get it wrong?" he responded. "Nobody saw it coming. Nobody in the whole world. Who saw it coming?"