Americans will soon be able to order free COVID-19 tests through the mail again. Biden administration health officials said Friday they will relaunch the program in late September.
Administration officials said during a briefing that households will be able to order four free tests through the Covidtests.gov website. The tests will be mailed directly to people’s homes.
This is the seventh time over the past three years the administration has made free tests available for all Americans, according to Dawn O’Connell, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services.
The announcement comes the day after the administration approved updated COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, as the U.S. deals with a summer surge of infections tied to different variants.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends everyone 6 months and older get an updated COVID-19 vaccine and the updated flu vaccine.
COVID-19 typically spreads at higher levels in the winter, but this summer has seen a spike in infections much larger than in recent years.
Still, CDC Director Mandy Cohen told reporters the increased viral activity “is not translating into similar increases in emergency visits and hospitalizations or deaths,” due to people’s immunity from prior vaccinations, infections or both.
The federal government no longer distributes vaccines for free. Instead, they are available on the commercial marketplace and are usually covered by people’s private insurance.
But there are 25 million to 30 million adults without health insurance and additional adults whose insurance does not cover all COVID-19 vaccine costs, and the government’s “Bridge Access Program” is shutting down at the end of the month due to lack of funding.
The program has provided more than 1.4 million free COVID-19 vaccines since it launched in September 2023 at a cost of more than $1 billion. It was meant to be temporary and was originally scheduled to end in December 2024.
Cohen said the agency “identified” an additional $62 million for state and local immunization programs to buy vaccines this respiratory season, “which will improve access to vaccines for the uninsured and underinsured adults.”
