Federal Government to Resume Free At-Home COVID Test Program

Health and Human Services (HHS) will relaunch its free at-home COVID-19 test program at the end of September amid a rise in infection cases over the summer, according to administration officials.
The tests will help detect the currently circulating COVID variants and can be used through the end of the year, according to a government website.
Dawn O’Connell, assistant secretary for preparedness and response at HHS, said that this marked the seventh time in the past three years that the administration has made free over-the-counter COVID-19 tests available to American households.
More than 1.8 billion over-the-counter COVID tests have been distributed since the program began in 2021, and more than 900 million free at-home tests have been distributed via the website, according to O’Connell.
“The severity of COVID looks more similar to flu, but if you still put head-to-head, flu and COVID, in terms of what is hospitalizing more folks and what is killing more folks, COVID continues to be a more dangerous virus than flu,” Cohen said.
She said vaccines remain to be “the most effective” tool to protect people against the virus.
The announcement was made a day after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted emergency use authorization for updated mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
The updated mRNA COVID-19 vaccines include those made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech. The agency said that these vaccines will target the currently circulating variants and provide better protection against severe COVID-19 disease.