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The Biden administration said on Friday it would resume providing free at-home Covid-19 testing to American families in late September as the virus gained a foothold in the United States this summer.
Americans will soon be able to use it COVID-19 Test Network Require Four free testsgovernment officials told reporters at a press conference. The test will be able to detect New coronavirus variants Most of the viruses currently circulating are descendants of the highly contagious omicron variant JN.1.
“These tests will help ensure families and their loved ones are safe this fall and winter,” Dawn O’Connell, assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said in a news release. Safety.
O’Connell said that since its inception in 2021, the government’s program has provided more than 1.8 billion free over-the-counter coronavirus tests to Americans.
The government is relaunching the program this summer after a relatively large increase in COVID-19 cases ahead of autumn and winter, when the virus typically spreads at higher levels each year. ‘High’ or ‘very high’ coronavirus concentrations detected in wastewater in nearly every U.S. state data From the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But the government decided to reopen the program in late September, as more Americans began traveling and gathering indoors with loved ones.
“As people begin to travel, as they begin to gather with friends and family for the holidays, we hope they will be able to get these four tests at that time,” said David Boucher, director of the Communicable Disease Preparedness and Response Division at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Boucher said.
By then, the latest round of the new coronavirus epidemic will be Pfizer and modern It is available to most Americans at pharmacies, clinics and other locations nationwide. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the vaccines on Thursday, targeting KP.2, an offshoot of JN.1.
As coronavirus infections rise again, testing has become an important protective tool. But since the U.S. government ended the public health emergency last May, laboratory PC tests, the traditional way to detect the coronavirus, have become more expensive and increasingly difficult to obtain for some Americans.
Still, some local health clinics and community sites offer home testing for free to the public.
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