The United States Postal Service (USPS) is set to restart its program for ordering free at-home COVID-19 tests by the end of September 2024. The announcement was made on the USPS website, which had previously been experiencing technical difficulties. The program will allow U.S. households to order up to four COVID-19 at-home nasal swab kits. The kits will be available while supplies last.
The U.S. Health and Human Services agency, which oversees COVID testing, has not announced an exact date for ordering to begin. However, the website where residents can order the kits, COVIDTests.gov, is expected to be fully operational by late September. The tests will detect current virus strains and can be ordered ahead of the holiday season when family and friends gather for celebrations.
The program restart comes as the government is once again urging people to get an updated COVID-19 booster ahead of the fall and winter respiratory virus season. U.S. regulators recently approved an updated COVID-19 vaccine that is designed to combat the recent virus strains and, hopefully, forthcoming winter ones, too. Vaccine uptake is waning, however. Most Americans have some immunity from prior infections or vaccinations, but data shows under a quarter of U.S. adults took last fall’s COVID-19 shot.
The Biden administration has given out 1.8 billion COVID-19 tests, including half distributed to households by mail. It’s unclear how many tests the feds have on hand. Tens of billions of tax-payer dollars have been used to develop COVID-19 tests, vaccines, and treatments.
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