WASHINGTON (NewsNation now) – President Joe Biden is set to highlight the federal government’s efforts to help overwhelmed medical facilities deal with the dramatic spike in coronavirus cases and staffing shortages due to the highly transmissible omicron variant.

Biden planned to make remarks Thursday morning on the “emergency response” to COVID-19, the White House said. Among the government’s efforts: increasing military medical personnel by 1,000 to help ease staffing shortages in hospitals across the country starting next week.

NewsNation will live stream Biden’s remarks above.

Many facilities are struggling because their workers are in home quarantine due to the virus at the same time as a national spike in COVID-19 cases. The new deployments will be in addition to other federal medical personnel who have already been sent to states to deal with severe shortages.

On Tuesday, Janet Woodcock, acting head of the Food and Drug Administration, told Congress that the highly transmissible strain will infect ‘most people’ and that the focus should be on ensuring essential services can continue uninterrupted. .

“I think it’s hard to process what’s really going on right now, which is, most people are going to get COVID, okay?” she said. “What we need to do is make sure hospitals can still operate – transport, other essential services are not interrupted while this is happening.”

Earlier this month, Biden pushed for more Americans to get vaccinated as omicron became the dominant strain in the United States.

“There is no excuse for anyone not to be vaccinated,” Biden said. “It continues to be a pandemic of the unvaccinated.”

Biden’s remarks come as a NewsNation poll of 1,000 registered voters, supplemented this week by Headquarters of the decision-making office, revealed that nearly 55% of respondents disapprove of the president’s handling of the pandemic, while 45% approve.

Scott Tranter, Councilor for Decision Desk Headquarters, said his poll suggests, “People don’t have a positive view of COVID (or) the economy and it looks like they’re blaming Joe Biden.”

The NewsNation poll mirrored several recent polls on the pandemic, although in some cases it differed from surveys with larger sample sizes. Biden’s approval rating fell to 33%, his lowest rating yet, in a new Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday. You can read NewsNation’s full poll here.

About 33% of all Americans have had their booster shot, according to data to be compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 62% of the population is considered fully vaccinated, according to CDC data.