Government to Restart Free At-Home COVID Test Distribution in September

In an effort to curb rising COVID-19 infections, Americans will be able to get their hands on more free over-the-counter tests.

On Friday, the Biden administration announced they will resume offering free at-home tests for COVID-19 to American households beginning late September, according to CNBC.

Households can request four free tests by visiting COVIDtests.gov, which can be used to detect the current variants of the virus that are circulating.

CNN reports that health officials are no longer tracking the coronavirus as closely as they once did during the public health emergency, and there aren’t any reliable estimates of new daily or weekly infections in the U.S. Instead, samples of wastewater are now scanned to "follow" new cases.

The CDC says that they found the highest viral activity levels in wastewater since July 2022, which puts the U.S. in the middle of a "significant" COVID-19 wave this summer.

"Currently, the COVID-19 wastewater viral activity level is very high nationally, with the highest levels in the Western US region," wrote Dr. Jonathan Yoder, deputy director of the CDC’s Wastewater Surveillance Program, in an email to CNN. "This year’s COVID-19 wave is coming earlier than last year, which occurred in late August/early September."

The CDC also reports that there is a slight uptick in hospitalizations and deaths for the virus. At the end of July, four out of 100,000 people in a given area are being hospitalized. That number is up from May, where only one in 100,000 needed hospitalization.

"These tests will help keep families and their loved ones safe this fall and winter season," said Dawn O’Connell, an assistant secretary at the Health and Human Services Department during a briefing, per CNBC. "This is the seventh time over the last three years that the Biden-Harris administration has given families the opportunity to order the over-the-counter Covid-19 tests for free."

O’Connell added that the government’s program has provided more than 1.8 billion free COVID tests to Americans since they launched the program in 2021.