On Tuesday, the White House officially launched a website to have rapid at-home COVID tests shipped to your home for free.
The Biden administration announced the plan to start providing free at-home COVID tests in December, after cases of the highly contagious omicron variant began to surge. The website to order your tests, free of charge, quietly launched in beta on Tuesday and officially rolled out this morning, per CNN.
So, how do you get your free tests? The process is supposed to be straightforward: go to COVIDtests.gov, enter your address, and then wait 7-12 days for your order to ship, per the website. Currently, each household is only eligible for one order of four individual rapid antigen tests—regardless of how many people are living in your home, posing a critical limitation to large families and multigenerational households. (The Biden administration has, however, announced plans to acquire an additional 500 million tests to keep up with rising testing demands, which may mean households will eventually be eligible for additional free tests.)
You reportedly don’t have to be a citizen to receive the free at-home COVID tests—if you have a U.S. residential address, you’re eligible. (Those with overseas diplomatic and military addresses are also eligible, per the website.) For those without internet access, the White House will be setting up a hotline to request free tests, the details of which will be announced next week, according to CNN.
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There has been plenty of public criticism about a lack of a proper federal response to COVID-19 in both the Trump and Biden administrations. That criticism has extended to a lack of readily available rapid tests, and while the free test program is a positive step in increasing access to testing, it’s not without flaws. In addition to the limited number of tests available for each household—a particular challenge for the over 50 million people in the U.S. who live in multi-generational households—some users reported glitches with the website during the beta period, CNN reported, and told their household had already requested tests.
This news comes in the midst of a shortage that’s made rapid tests almost impossible to find—drugstores are often sold out and free testing sites around the country are reporting long lines and a demand for tests that frequently outpaces the supply, as SELF previously reported. The shortage was so bad earlier this month in Indiana that the state government even announced it would begin restricting eligibility for who could take rapid tests.
Even for those who can find a test, the cost can be prohibitive. To help offset the financial burden, the government announced that private health insurance companies (whether provided by your employer, or purchased on the individual marketplace) would be required to cover eight at-home COVID tests per person, per month. As SELF previously reported, “the new coverage requirement means that most consumers with private health coverage can go online or to a pharmacy or store, buy a test, and either get it paid for up-front by their health plan, or get reimbursed for the cost by submitting a claim to their plan,” according to a press release from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Source: SELF
