The Biden administration has announced that it will distribute hundreds of millions of free, high-quality masks throughout the country something the public has long requested, particularly amid a wave of the highly transmissible COVID-19 variant omicron.

President Joe Biden revealed on Wednesday that the White House will distribute 400 million non-surgical N95 masks from the Strategic National Stockpile for free. The stockpile currently has more than 750 million N95 masks, triple what was there in January 2021 after the administration used the Defense Production Act to ramp up mask production.

According to the White House, the mask distribution program will be the largest deployment of personal protective equipment in the countrys history.

To ensure accessing these masks is easy and convenient, the Administration is leveraging the federal retail pharmacy program and the federal community health center program, so that free masks are available at many of the same convenient and trusted locations Americans go to get vaccinated and boosted, a White House official said. N95 masks will be available for the public to pick up at tens of thousands of local pharmacies, as well as at thousands of community health centers across the country.