Federal government brings back free COVID-19 home tests
Federal government brings back free COVID-19 home tests
The federal government is re-upping the program that delivers free COVID home-testing kits via the Postal Service.
The order form at Covidtests.gov will be live before the end of the month. That should help American households restock ahead of respiratory virus season and holiday travel and support test manufacturers dealing with fluctuating demand.
Rapid home COVID test kits were once a hot commodity. Now, some of us let them pile up in our medicine cabinets until they expire.
Julie Swann, an expert on health care supply chains at North Carolina State University, said that boom-and-bust cycle is familiar to companies that manufacture emergency supplies.
“And that makes it difficult to maintain the operation, for tests, for treatments, even for vaccine,” Swann said.
But the market for test kits has been especially volatile as our attitudes about catching the virus have shifted, said Gigi Gronvall at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
“I think people are a little more laissez-faire,” Gronvall said, and less likely to test when they feel sick. “It’s not a huge demand like it used to be.”
Demand for tests does still surge at times, mostly around the holidays or during a regional uptick in cases.
But with so little certainty, “it’s hard to want to invest in the manufacturing of that device,” said Amy Kelbick, health policy director with the consulting firm McDermott+.
Some companies that sprung up to meet peak pandemic demand have scaled back or closed down, she added.
Government orders have helped steady business for others, particularly now that insurance coverage for home tests has become spotty. “It really is the federal government that is most likely the biggest customer for a lot of these testing manufacturers,” Kelbick said.
Which is a lot less risky than relying on the market, Gronvall said. “You want to make sure that the tests are there when you need it.”
And that manufacturing capacity is there for other tests that we don’t yet know we’ll need.
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