President Joe Biden wants to send masks to every home in America in a bid to persuade those still refusing to wear them into new habits and to bring contamination and deaths to a halt.
The current administration is reviving a plan scrapped by the Trump administration last year at the peak of the pandemic.
Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, has said an announcement will come soon with details.
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He said: "The public health agencies recommended it; the president vetoed it for some reason.
"We want to get this back on track. We're looking at what can be done to quickly do this with the mass supplies that we have. I hope in the next few days or next week, we may be able to announce some progress on this.
"But, of course, this is part overall of a plan to try to get every American masked up in these first 100 days. We're going to do whatever we can to make masks more available to people to increase the supply of masks and of course to get people to wear those masks."
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The US president is currently promoting a 100 days of mask-wearing to combat the still alarming number of deaths in the country. The 7-day average infections are trending downward, however.
Last year's plan was for the US Postal Service to distribute 650 million face coverings, according to internal documents reviewed by CNN in September.
According to a senior administration official speaking with The Washington Post at the time, the original plan was scrapped because some advisers worried that it could create 'concern or panic'.
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A poll from the University of Southern California Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research last month found that while 83 percent of Americans thought wearing a mask was an effective way of protecting themselves from Covid-19, only 51 percent reported they often or always wore a mask when in close contact with people from outside their household.
A recent viral video showing a Florida supermarket owner claiming masks don't work has been causing hot discussion on the topic.
Words: Cilene Tanaka