The Biden administration found itself on the defensive Thursday about whether it was adequately prepared for the wave of COVID-19 omicron cases sweeping the country.

At a White House news briefing, press secretary Jen Psaki fielded a number of tough questions about answers President Joe Biden gave in an interview Wednesday with ABC News’ David Muir.

When asked about at-home tests being hard to find at stores ahead of the holidays, Biden said, “Nothing has been good enough.” Then the president said “nobody saw” the omicron variant “coming.” 

Psaki tried to clean up the president’s comments, insisting he has better positioned the country to respond to variants and rising case numbers.

“We, of course, knew that there would be additional variants at some point coming,” Psaki said. “We didn't know what they would look like. But we've been preparing for a range of contingencies all along throughout this process. That's why we have had ample vaccine supply, that's why we have had ample mask supply and why we have worked to ramp up aggressively our testing over the past few months.”

Biden announced Tuesday that his administration will distribute 500 million at-home tests to Americans free of charge. But those tests won’t begin to be available until next month, too late for those seeking peace of mind before traveling for the holidays.

With over-the-counter tests in short supply, people in some cities have been lining up for hours outside of testing facilities. Meanwhile, the seven-day average for new daily cases has soared to more than 161,000, twice what it was just three weeks ago.

Psaki noted that before the summer’s delta variant surge, the demand for at-home tests was so low that some manufacturers were laying off workers. She said the U.S. has since quadrupled its testing capacity because the Biden administration invoked the Defense Production Act and invested $3 billion in test manufacturing.  

“We … had to take steps as a federal government to build up the market because the market wasn't there to meet if the demand rose,” Psaki said. 

Without those actions, she said, there would not have been 500 million tests for the Biden administration to order.

Psaki added that the Food and Drug Administration’s authorization of five new tests since October has helped, too. 

But Psaki acknowledged the U.S. is still “not where we need to be on testing.”

“No one is saying we are,” she said. “That's why we have tried to take additional rapid steps and be as bold and ambitious as we can with the available supply that is on the market.”

Psaki listed other steps the president has taken since omicron was first identified just before Thanksgiving in South Africa. They included imposing travel bans for South Africa and neighboring countries, urging Americans to get vaccinated or boosted, releasing a winter strategy for tackling the virus and establishing a new standing omicron conference call between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and states, municipalities, tribes and territories.