The White House said Tuesday that Americans are already eligible for a third order for free home coronavirus tests sent through the postal service. The relocation doubled to 16 the total number of tests the program provided to each household.
The tests, approved by the Food and Drug Administration and available on the federal website covidtests.gov, extend President Biden’s promise during the Omicron winter wave, when Americans faced meager supplies of tests, empty shelves and long queues.
Under fading criticism of the shortage, Mr Biden promised a billion tests at home, and his administration secured commitments for hundreds of millions. The White House said half of them would be distributed through the postal program. More than 70 million American households – more than half of the country’s households – have ordered tests in this way so far, and approximately 350 million tests have been delivered.
The opportunity to order more tests comes at a still dangerous time of the pandemic. The average number of new confirmed cases reported daily in the United States has tripled since early April, reaching more than 95,000 by Monday, according to a New York Times database. Hospitalizations have also increased by 26 percent nationally in the past two weeks. New deaths from the virus are declining to an average of about 300 a day – partly reflected, public health experts said, in protecting against a serious illness that many Americans have acquired through vaccination or overcoming past coronavirus infection.
Rapid tests at home, which usually give results within 15 minutes, have become more common and available in pharmacies, making the total number of virus cases nationwide more difficult to track. People who test positive using tests at home usually do not report the results to local health departments, so many new infections remain irrelevant.
However, as more portable forms of the virus have spread in recent months, tests continue to be a critical resource for many Americans, including those who can quickly diagnose infection and receive antiviral treatments such as Paxlovid.
The number of Paxlovid courses granted has increased by more than 300 percent in the last month, according to the Ministry of Health and Social Services.
Dr Ashish K. Ja, Covid-19’s White House Response Coordinator, said on Tuesday that the new round of home tests was an important resource to help people avoid spreading the virus.
“Are you going to a big gathering?” “Use quick tests to avoid being the person wearing Covid to the party,” Dr. Ja wrote on Twitter. “Visiting a vulnerable relative? Use quick tests to protect them. “
The White House has warned that without more funding from Congress, the administration may not be able to “sustain” local test production this year, potentially leading companies to shut down production and leave the nation more blind to the virus if demand the tests should increase and remain unsatisfied.
Manufacturers continue to be able to produce the tests, according to Mara Aspinal, a biomedical diagnostics expert at Arizona State University who is on the board of directors of OraSure, which tests for coronavirus. Federal-licensed manufacturers could do approximately 422 million quick tests at home this month and 402 million next month, down from a peak of 535 million in February, according to data collected by Ms. Aspinal.
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