On his first full day in office, President Biden signed an executive order to boost the availability of coronavirus testing. Five days later, standing in the White House with his health advisory team by his side, Biden called the fight against covid-19 a “wartime effort” and pledged that tests would be widely available.

In early September, amid the delta variant surge, Biden reiterated the promise that “every American, no matter their income, can access free and convenient tests.”

Now, nearly a full year into Biden’s term, as the virus has mutated its way through the Greek alphabet to the omicron variant, testing is in short supply in many places, leaving frustrated Americans waiting in long lines for tests — if they can get them at all.

That is feeding into a wave of concern, despondency and in some places near-frenzy at the likely approach of yet another spike in a pandemic the country has battled for nearly two years. This late-December disarray — crowded testing sites, empty drugstore shelves — is raising fresh questions about how Biden and his team have executed on his pledge to defeat the pandemic.