The White House announced that starting Wednesday, January 19, people can order free COVID-19 testing kits through the COVIDTests.gov website. The White House has now followed through on President Joe Biden’s December announcement that the administration would create a website to distribute 500 million test kits.
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To get a COVID-19 test kit, you only need to enter two pieces of information — your name and address. In its announcement, the White House said the test kits will ship “within 7-12 days of ordering” through the US Postal Service after receiving user registrations. Currently, the limit is 4 test kits per residential address.
On Wednesday, a White House adviser said the site “should be live by the end of the week.” Technically, the government has hit that deadline — you can visit COVIDTests.gov right now, although it currently shows a landing page letting you know the test will be available on Wednesday, and you don’t need to enter a credit card number just get one.
It is reported that the US Postal Service is not only responsible for getting test tools into the hands of users. And, according to Protocol, it’s also responsible for developing a website that will deal with millions of people trying to get a test at the same time. The report quoted a government official as saying that it “takes our website launch very seriously” and that it was “not built from scratch”.
Given the government’s less-than-ideal reputation for launching health care sites, there are doubts that the site will be able to handle this traffic — some rightly pointing out that some of the most vulnerable people may struggle to get online and navigate the site. If you don’t have access to the website, you can also call the hotline to order a test, and the government will “work with state and local community organizations to support the nation’s most affected and at-risk communities to apply for testing,” a White House statement said.
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