Federal Government to Resume Free At-Home COVID Test Program

An at-home COVID-19 nasal swab testing kit provided by the Los Angeles County Home Test Collection program, which provides test kits to county residents for free via mail, is seen in this file photo. The program was temporarily paused on Jan. 5, 2022. Courtesy of County of Los Angeles

Health and Human Services (HHS) will relaunch its free at-home COVID-19 test program at the end of September amid a rise in infection cases over the summer, according to administration officials.

U.S. households will soon be able to order four free COVID-19 tests through the COVIDTests.gov website, with the tests being directly delivered to their houses, HHS officials said on Friday.

The tests will help detect the currently circulating COVID variants and can be used through the end of the year, according to a government website.

Dawn O’Connell, assistant secretary for preparedness and response at HHS, said that this marked the seventh time in the past three years that the administration has made free over-the-counter COVID-19 tests available to American households.

“These tests will help keep families and their loved ones safe this fall and winter season,” O’Connell said during a press conference.

More than 1.8 billion over-the-counter COVID tests have been distributed since the program began in 2021, and more than 900 million free at-home tests have been distributed via the website, according to O’Connell.

The program has been paused and relaunched multiple times in the past. The administration initially suspended the program in March following a decrease in COVID-19-related hospitalizations at the time.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Friday that COVID-19 infections were growing in 27 states as of Aug. 16. COVID test positivity was 18 percent across the United States for the week ending Aug. 17, according to CDC data.

CDC director Mandy Cohen said during the press conference on Friday that the agency expects there will be “a similar or lower” number of hospitalizations during the respiratory season.

“The severity of COVID looks more similar to flu, but if you still put head-to-head, flu and COVID, in terms of what is hospitalizing more folks and what is killing more folks, COVID continues to be a more dangerous virus than flu,” Cohen said.

She said vaccines remain to be “the most effective” tool to protect people against the virus.

The announcement was made a day after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted emergency use authorization for updated mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

“Given waning immunity of the population from previous exposure to the virus and from prior vaccination, we strongly encourage those who are eligible to consider receiving an updated COVID-19 vaccine to provide better protection against currently circulating variants,” Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in a statement.

The updated mRNA COVID-19 vaccines include those made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech. The agency said that these vaccines will target the currently circulating variants and provide better protection against severe COVID-19 disease.