- The Biden administration will resume offering free at-home Covid-19 tests in late September amid a summer surge in virus cases in the United States.
- Americans will soon be able to request four free tests through COVIDtests.gov, government officials told reporters.
- The tests are designed to detect the currently circulating Covid variants, which are mostly descendants of the highly contagious omicron variant JN.1.
The Biden administration announced on Friday that it would resume offering free at-home Covid-19 tests to American households starting in late September, as the virus spread more widely in the United States this summer.
Americans will soon be able to request four free tests through COVIDtests.gov, administration officials told reporters during a briefing. The tests will be able to detect the Covid variants currently circulating, most of which are descendants of the highly contagious omicron variant JN.1.
“These tests will help protect families and their loved ones this fall and winter,” said Dawn O’Connell, assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services, during the briefing. “This is the seventh time in the last three years that the Biden-Harris administration has given families the opportunity to order the over-the-counter Covid-19 tests for free” – through the government’s website.
According to O’Connell, the government program has provided Americans with more than 1.8 billion free, over-the-counter Covid tests since it launched in 2021.
The government is restarting the program because of a relatively sharp rise in Covid cases this summer and in the run-up to fall and winter, when the virus typically spreads more strongly each year. Almost every U.S. state is finding “high” or “very high” levels of Covid in wastewater, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
However, the government decided to resume the program at the end of September because that is when more Americans will be traveling again and meeting with loved ones indoors.
“As people begin to travel again and gather with friends and family over the holidays, we want them to have those four tests available at that time,” David Boucher, director of infectious disease preparedness and response at HHS, told reporters during the press conference.
By then, the latest round of Covid vaccinations from Pfizer and Moderna will be available to most Americans at pharmacies, health centers and other locations across the country. The Food and Drug Administration authorized those shots, which target a JN.1 offshoot called KP.2, on Thursday.
Testing is an important tool for protection as Covid infections begin to rise again. But since the U.S. government ended the public health emergency in May last year, laboratory PCR tests – the traditional method of detecting Covid – have become more expensive and less accessible for some Americans.
However, certain local health centers and community facilities are offering free at-home testing to the public.
