Starting Monday, [people in the US] can once again order free at-home COVID-19 tests to be delivered straight to their homes.

The Biden administration announced last week that it is providing $600 million in funding to produce the new tests and restarting a website allowing Americans to order up to four tests per household.

Orders can be placed at COVIDTests.gov, and the no-cost tests will be delivered for free by the United States Postal Service starting Oct. 2, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

  • @chickenfish
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    169 months ago

    done. pretty please don’t let them send me Binax again those are a pain in the ass compared to iHealth.

  • Flying Squid
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    49 months ago

    Thanks for reminding us! Just ordered.

  • Captain Poofter
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    29 months ago

    Does anyone know anything if these tests have been updated in any way since the onset of covid? I read a couple mutation strands in that they were less effective as they mutated, but if that is true I imagine we’re quite a number of strands down the line now, and am curious about the tests and how they work

    • @MicroWaveOP
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      89 months ago

      The short answer is yes, these home tests are still effective:

      But ultimately, the tests are still capable of picking up infections, said Todd Merchak, who co-leads the RADx program at the National Institutes of Health. The program, whose name is short for “rapid acceleration of diagnostics,” was created during the pandemic to quickly develop tests for the coronavirus.

      “To date, the performance of currently marketed COVID-19 tests has not been adversely impacted by any new variants,” Merchak said in a statement.

      The reason is because:

      Most rapid tests, on the other hand, target the nucleocapsid proteins, or N-protein, of the coronavirus. N-proteins don’t change as much as spike proteins do.

      https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/18/health/covid-19-home-tests-still-work-wellness/index.html

  • Valen
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    19 months ago

    Your order #: HE000BN2GQQLDPQNW12T40375228 has been placed.

    That seems a little excessive. Like they need to have a different number for every atom of the Earth.

  • Polar
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    -79 months ago

    For a domain using the TLD “world”, and then defaulting to US news, is pretty annoying.

    Why not put US in the title?

    • @MicroWaveOP
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      149 months ago

      I kept the title verbatim because of rule 4 of /c/news: “4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.”

      But I did specify “people in the US” in the summary body for clarity.

    • @SheeEttin
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      39 months ago

      The news community is primarily US news. If you want primarily non-US news, try the worldnews community.

      If you don’t like it, take it up with the admins, or host your own instance.

      • Polar
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        -19 months ago

        The sidebar literally says the world is welcome and that this is a world news community.

        usdefaultism at it again.

    • @scottywh
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      09 months ago

      What’s annoying is seeing this same damn whiny complaint on every US news post in this community.

      Get the fuck over it already.

      • Polar
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        -19 months ago

        Maybe Americans should stop being so usdefaultism?