You can now order free at-home COVID-19 tests

[tanaqui]

Every home in the U.S. is now eligible to order 4 free at-⁠home COVID-⁠19 tests. The tests are completely free. Orders, which are being shipped by USPS, will usually ship in 7-12 days.

You can order your tests at https://www.covidtests.gov or go directly to the order page at https://special.usps.com/testkits

There's going to be a phone number for those without internet access, but that doesn't seem to have been listed yet. Also, the service is still in "beta" and there have been reports that people in the same apartment building but different units are being rejected as duplicates if one of their neighbours has already ordered kits. ETA from the comments: toastykitten says a workaround for the apartment building error is to put the suite number in the first address line instead of the second.

If you have health insurance, your insurance company is now obliged to reimburse you for 8 at-⁠home tests per month for each person on the plan. You can see more details about this (and whether you have to pay upfront and claim it back or can get the tests free at the pharmacy) at https://www.cms.gov/how-to-get-your-at-home-OTC-COVID-19-test-for-free

As a follow up to the previous post about scam testing sites, the https://www.covidtests.gov website also links to the website where you can find legitimate testing sites that offer no or low-cost tests, even if you're not insured. You can look up sites in your state at https://www.hhs.gov/coronavirus/community-based-testing-sites/index.html

Comments

[j00j]

Thanks for this summary!

[teaotter]

Thank you!

[chanter1944]

I can confirm that the ordering site *is* screenreader accessible. I say this as a Jaws user, so no idea how it'll fly with NVDA or other software. But yay!

[toastykitten]

Workaround for the apartment building error: put the suite number in the first address line instead of the second.

[tanaqui]

Thanks for the tip — I've added that into the main post.

[jazzyjj]

Thanks for this. I was actually going to add that site to my profile page, but apparently one or more settings on my new Mac had to be tweaked so I'm going to try again. My neighbor across the hall and I heard about this because he is a news hound.