California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced new measures Wednesday to protect Californians against the coronavirus amid a surge of the omicron variant.

Newsom said the state will distribute 6 million take-home COVID test kits to K-12 students returning to classes at public schools following the winter holidays. He said the state is also extending hours at COVID testing sites statewide to make them more accessible.

The governor also confirmed Tuesday's announcement that he would be mandating that all health care workers in the state receive a COVID-19 vaccine booster shot, setting a Feb. 1 deadline.

Speaking at a news conference in Alameda County, Newsom said "protecting our front-line heroes and employees" was a critical step in beating back the COVID-19 surge being fueled by the highly transmissible omicron variant.

"That's why we led as the first state in the nation to require all health care workers to be vaccinated," Newsom said. "And we're really proud of those partnerships, our providers, the remarkable support we received from organized labor as well as community clinics, not just the hospitals, that supported that effort. And that led to extraordinarily high vaccination rates for our health care workers.

All California health care workers were mandated earlier this year to get vaccinated against COVID-19. The mandate required health care workers to receive their second dose of vaccine by Sept. 30.

The governor insisted that the state was still holding its own in the fight against COVID-19 and the Omicron variant, but he noted that metrics are trending upward. He said the state's testing-positivity rate is 3.3% this week, up from 2.3% last week.

"That's a big increase in just one week," he said.

One week ago, the state announced 5,400 new COVID infections, but Wednesday that number is nearly 11,000.

"So almost a doubling of cases in one week, and a positivity rate that increased substantially," he said. "So you can do the math on this to get a sense of the challenge that we all face here in the state, country and around the rest of the world."

The governor said there were no immediate plans to extend the booster requirement to other sectors, such as state employees.

City News Service contributed to this report.