Biden Administration has Free COVID-19 Tests available now, and 400 million N95 Masks available to Ship Soon across the U.S.: Here’s how to Get Yours

President Joe Biden’s administration made their promise of free COVID-19 home test kits a reality a day early this week. While COVIDTests.gov was expected to start accepting orders on Wednesday, an “Order free at-home tests” button was added Tuesday, which brings users to usps.com/covidtests to order four at-home free tests.  If you go to the USPS website, all you have to do is enter a valid street address and every household will receive 4 test kits completely free.  No credit card or insurance information is necessary.  The Biden Administration purchased 500 million test kits to help combat the post holiday and Omicron variant surge in cases.

Some users immediately identified at least one glitch with the new system: Orders made by different people living in the same apartment building but in different units were rejected as duplicates, according to some tweets. Americans are supposed to be able to order up to four kits per address. Once ordered, tests are to be mailed within seven to 12 days. One workaround is to put your apartment number in the street address field, Twitter users are reporting.

And there’s more good news in the fight to end the pandemic: the Biden Administration will start shipping 400 million free non-surgical N95 face masks to distribution sites nationwide this week as part of efforts to fight the surging omicron COVID-19 variant, according to the White House. Americans will be able to pick up their masks at one of “tens of thousands” of pharmacies, thousands of community centers and other locations across the country beginning late next week, the White House said. The White House expects the program to be fully up and running by early February.

Individuals will be limited to three masks per person to ensure broad access to the program, according to Kevin Munoz, assistant White House press secretary. The White House called the undertaking “the largest deployment of protective equipment in U.S. history.”  Biden hinted about the move last week, saying his administration would be announcing “how we are making high-quality masks available to American people, the American people, for free.” He noted that about one-third of Americans still say they don’t wear masks of any kind to prevent the spread of COVID-19.  “I know that for some Americans, a mask is not always affordable or convenient to get,” Biden said.

The masks will come from the U.S.’s Strategic National Stockpile, which has tripled its supply of N95 masks to 750 million in the year since Biden took office. Due to the high contagiousness of the Omicron variant, the CDC now recommends that people switch to high quality surgical or N95 masks instead of cloth masks.

 The White House plans to rely on the same federal programs used to distribute COVID-19 vaccines to pharmacies and community centers. That means most Americans will be able to go to many of the same locations in which they received COVID-19 vaccinations to get their free masks.  The free masks are in addition to 30 million masks the Biden administration distributed to food banks and community health centers last year and 23.5 million masks and respirators sent to states.

On his first day in office, Biden took action to require masks be worn in federal buildings, airplanes and trains, and he’s called on Americans to continue wearing masks in all public indoors settings in a concerted effort to help stop the pandemic.  However, many state and county governments have refused to enact similar mask and vaccination protocols, allowing the continued spread of the original virus and more variants like Delta and Omicron to take hold.

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