U.S. will offer free at-home kits starting late September

The Biden administration on Friday said it can resume offering free at-home Covid-19 tests to American households in late September because the virus has gained a stronger foothold within the U.S. this summer.

Americans will soon give you the chance to make use of COVIDtests.gov to request 4 free tests, administration officials told reporters during a briefing. The tests will give you the chance to detect the Covid variants which are currently circulating, most of that are descendants of the highly contagious omicron variant JN.1. 

“These tests will help keep families and their family members protected this fall and winter season,” Dawn O’Connell, an assistant secretary for preparedness and response on the Health and Human Services Department, said through the briefing. “That is the seventh time over the past three years that the Biden-Harris administration has given families the chance to order the over-the-counter Covid-19 tests free of charge” through the federal government’s website.

The federal government’s program has provided greater than 1.8 billion free over-the-counter Covid tests to Americans because it began in 2021, in keeping with O’Connell.

The federal government is relaunching this system amid a comparatively large spike in Covid cases this summer, and ahead of the autumn and winter, when the virus typically spreads at higher levels annually. There’s a “high” or “very high” level of Covid being detected in wastewater in almost every U.S. state, in keeping with data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

But the federal government decided to reopen this system in late September since it’s when more Americans begin to travel and gather indoors with family members. 

“As people begin to travel, as they begin to get along with family and friends through the vacations, we wish them to have those 4 tests available to them at the moment,” David Boucher, director of infectious disease preparedness and response at HHS, told reporters through the briefing.

By then, the newest round of Covid shots from Pfizer and Moderna can be available to most Americans in pharmacies, health clinics and other locations nationwide. The Food and Drug Administration approved those shots, which goal a JN.1 offshoot called KP.2, on Thursday.

Testing is a critical tool for defense as Covid infections climb again. But lab PCR tests — the normal approach to detecting Covid — have turn out to be costlier and fewer accessible for some Americans for the reason that U.S. government ended the general public health emergency in May last yr. 

Still, certain local health clinics and community sites offer at-home tests to the general public for free of charge.