Where are those free at home COVID Tests?

Back in December, President Joe Biden said the government ordered half a billion rapid COVID tests. According to a White House press release, starting Jan. 19 Americans could order free kits on COVID.TESTS.GOV. Shipment was expected within 7-to-12 business days. Following that timeline, if you ordered right away you should have received your four free tests by February 4.

According to a U.S. Postal Service spokesperson more than 60 million American households requested tests. So far, USPS says tens of millions have been shipped. But a banner on the USPS website to order those tests reads, “Due to high demand, we’re fulfilling orders as tests come in. Place your order now and it will ship as soon as tests become available.”

If you ordered more than two weeks ago, or if you’ve received an email with a tracking number and estimated delivery date and are still waiting, head to this site, and make sure you have your tracking number.  According to the USPS spokesperson, if you have not received a tracking number that means your package has not shipped yet. To find out the status of your order call the USPS help line with your order number: 1-800-ASK-USPS.      WUSA9 2/10/22

Every test kit comes with an expiration date, and many might wonder how much longer the test kit will be good for if it’s already delayed in the manufacturing and shipping process. The shelf life is generally several months to a year, according to one expert. “The farther away you are from the expiration date, the less reliable to test. And so if all you have is an expired test kit, and you think you might have COVID disease, and you test it and it’s positive, then I would believe that result. But if it’s negative, I wouldn’t trust it.”

All in all, if you receive your test kit and don’t get a chance to use it before the expiration date, don't throw it away as it can still provide some accuracy if you test positive. The FDA is allowing some antigen tests to add three months to the expiration date.  RochesterFirst.Com 2/15/22

This guidance is posted on the covidtests.gov website:

My CareStart COVID-⁠19 Home Antigen Tests are about to expire. Do I really need to use them so soon? No, CareStart COVID-⁠19 Home Antigen Tests are good for 3 months after the expiration date on the box.

The FDA is allowing CareStart COVID-⁠19 Home Antigen Tests to add 3 months to the expiration date on their box. This means that boxes that expire on:

• March 2022 are actually good until June 30, 2022
• April 2022 are actually good until July 31, 2022
• May 2022 are actually good until August 31, 2022

https://www.covidtests.gov/faq/

• For a fascinating look at previous pandemics and how we made it through those, visit https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-12-23/will-the-pandemic-ever-end-heres-what-happened-with-the-last-ones

• This would have been a great anagram for Valentines Day: Valentine and Ventilate. But let's hope you don't have to ventilate your Valentine!

• Attenuation.  How did we beat the Spanish flu of 1918? We didn't. We survived it. A third of the world’s population was believed to have contracted the Spanish flu during that pandemic, and it had a case-fatality rate of as high as 10-20% globally and 2.5% in the United States. Roughly 675,000 people in America died out of a population of 103.2 million, a number recently surpassed by COVID-19 victims of a 2020 U.S. population of 329.5 million. Flu vaccines wouldn’t be developed until the 1930s and wouldn’t become widely available for another decade. Ultimately, the virus went through a process called attenuation. Basically, it got less bad. We still have descendent strains of the Spanish flu floating around today. It’s endemic, not a pandemic. Associated Press 2/15/22

Epidemiology is the science at center of public health.

What if a single vaccine could protect us against all variants of the novel coronavirus, current and future — or even ward off entirely new coronaviruses down the road? Developing a variant-proof or pan-coronavirus vaccine is extremely complicated, but scientists are working on it. Research is underway, and some early results are expected soon.

Health experts broadly agree that the “whack-a-mole” approach of rebooting the shots every time a new variant pops up isn't a viable long-term strategy. The recent infection surges driven by the omicron and delta variants underscored the importance of getting ahead of the virus. But scientists will need to overcome some major obstacles before we see any kind of universal vaccine. “There’s a lot of scientific discovery that needs to go into that," Anthony S. Fauci, the White House medical adviser, told The Washington Post. WAPO 2/14/22

51  &  25.1
52.3  &  24.5
62.1  &  24.2
43.3  &  21.4

^{cumulative total as of 02/18/22}