Demand is high for at-home tests

When the Biden administration launched its website allowing Americans to request free at-home Covid-19 tests on Jan. 18, residents of Elmont and Franklin Square appeared eager to stock up on test kits amid the largest surge of cases nationwide since the coronavirus pandemic began.

“I think there’s a big rush,” Claudine Hall, president of the Jamaica Square Improvement League, a civic organization that serves Elmont, said, adding that everyone she had contacted had already requested tests online. “I think it’s going to do well.”

Four at-home tests can be requested per residence at www.CovidTests.gov and delivered by mail. The Biden administration has said that purchasing and distributing the first 500 million of 1 billion promised tests, funded by the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill signed into law last March, would cost $4 billion. Tests are expected to ship seven to 12 days after being ordered.

Hall, who said she had already requested her at-home kits, called the rollout an “awesome idea and gesture,” and added that an increase in testing would help “keep people safe and healthy.”

State Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages, whose 22nd District encompasses Elmont and parts of Franklin Square, compared at-home test kits to a “brick of gold” amid the Omicron wave, adding that they were sorely needed and would make it much easier for people to stay safe.

Solages said she first recognized the demand for home test kits when she organized a Jan. 2 distribution of tests to local residents. Because of the rise in Omicron cases, she said, many people were searching for them, but were unable to locate any at local stores that ran out of tests due to the rise in demand.

“People want these kits,” Solages said, adding that hundreds of names remain on a signup list from the Jan. 2 giveaway. She said she saw an overwhelming influx of requests for tests: constituents called, emailed and reached out to her office on social media.

The federal government, she said, is offering a new avenue to meet the high demand, and she added that she thought the increased availability of test kits would help slow the spread of the virus by helping people find out if they are positive or not. “It’s an easy tool for people to have,” she said, to check their status and, if they test positive, to quarantine immediately.

Solages also said she thought that more at-home testing would help reduce the number of Covid-19 emergency room visits, which are currently at their highest level since the pandemic began.

Although cases and hospitalizations remain at all-time highs nationwide, the Omicron wave appears to have peaked across New York state. “I’m hopeful we’re over the spike and spread,” Solages said. “This is a tool we didn’t have in 2020,” she said of at-home test kits, expressing hope that the federal program, as well as new methods to detect and combat the virus, will continue to roll out as the pandemic drags on.

Schools across Nassau County are also offering at-home test kits for students: Some 420,000 kits were distributed to BOCES facilities in Nassau and Suffolk counties late last month. In Nassau, tests will be divided among the county’s 56 districts based on student enrollment, and each district will determine how to distribute them.

Acting State Homeland Security Commissioner Jackie Bray said at a late-December news conference that Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration hoped to provide school districts with millions of at-home test kits. “It’s our responsibility to supply as many of our districts as we possibly can so that they can supply as many kids as they possibly can with kits,” Bray said, adding that the state planned to distribute 6 million kits to districts statewide.

Despite these federal and state programs, Solages cautioned that more Covid-19 variants are likely to appear in the future. She stressed that at-home test kits would be key in combating potential future surges.