Following a summer season uptick of COVID-19 infections, Individuals will quickly have the ability to order free COVID-19 assessments this fall.
The U.S. Division of Well being and Human Companies has not but supplied an official date that the nasal swab assessments might be out there, however says kits ought to be able to order by the tip of September. The initiative is rolling out forward of the vacation season, when colds, flus and different sicknesses grow to be extra widespread.
Households will have the ability to acquire 4 free antigen COVID-19 assessments by visiting COVIDtests.gov, a repeat of the 2023 program. And the division says that these assessments will have the ability to “detect present COVID-19 variants and can be utilized by the tip of the 12 months,” in accordance with its web site.
The most recent knowledge from the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention discovered that check positivity for COVID-19 stood at 14.9%, a lower from the 17.8% excessive reached in August, although that quantity continues to be elevated. By comparability, in Could, positivity hovered round 3-4%.
On Monday, the web site to order the assessments seemed to be down as a consequence of “an excessive amount of visitors or a configuration error.”
In 2023, 900 million COVID-10 assessments went out to Individuals by this system, in accordance with U.S. Well being and Human Companies.
Final month, U.S. regulators authorized an up to date COVID-19 vaccine that seeks to fight the KP variant pressure, the predominant variant that has been circulating. People as younger as 6 months might be eligible to obtain the shot.
“Vaccination continues to be the cornerstone of COVID-19 prevention,” Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Middle for Biologics Analysis and Analysis mentioned in a press launch. “Given waning immunity of the inhabitants from earlier publicity to the virus and from prior vaccination, we strongly encourage those that are eligible to think about receiving an up to date COVID-19 vaccine to supply higher safety towards at the moment circulating variants.”
