United States – While a rising wave of infection during this summer is subsiding and as people in the United States are preparing for another lethal wave of COVID in the winter, additional free COVID tests are expected to be offered, the federal health officials said on Friday.
When the federal program reopens, every U. S. household can request up to four nasal swab tests starting from the fourth week of September, as per COVIDtests.gov.
The U.S. HHS is responsible for coordinating the testing has not provided the exact time for the commencement of the order. In the notice, it was established that since the start of the pandemic, the program has delivered more than 900 million tests directly to homes across America, as reported by HealthDay.
Importance of Testing
“COVID-19 testing can help you know if you have COVID-19 so you can decide what to do next, like getting treatment to reduce your risk of severe illness and taking steps to decrease the percentage of spreading the virus to others,” the HHS announcement said.
The tests will pick up the variants that are already present and can be ordered before the holidays when people are likely to congregate with their loved ones indoors, an HHS spokesperson said to CBS News.
Updated COVID-19 Vaccines Recommended
This was unveiled shortly after the U. S. Food and Drug Administration endorsed modernized mRNA Covid vaccines from Pfizer as well as Moderna for the fall. Australia now forecasts Novavax will get approval for its updated vaccine sometime this year.
The CDC of the United States recommends all Americans 6 months and older get an injection of the “new style 2024-2025 COVID-19 vaccine. ”
Rising Hospitalizations as Winter Approaches
While most Americans have some level of antibodies against COVID from previous waves or vaccination, government statistics show that fewer than a quarter of U. S. adults took the first COVID shots last fall, CBS News said.
While deaths and severe infections have decreased since the very beginning of the pandemic in 2020, hospitalizations have recently begun to increase and are currently higher than last winter, according to CDC figures. Overall, the virus has claimed over a million lives in the United States, as reported by HealthDay.