The White House announced Thursday that it plans to relaunch a program that provided free COVID tests to American households in need through the U.S. Postal Service. The free test program is a part of the Biden administration's COVID-19 "winter preparedness plan" to face rising COVID cases, The New York Times reports.
Administration officials paused the USPS COVID test program in early September due to concerns that the demand for free test kits threatened to deplete supplies before winter. They warned that the White House could not afford to buy more tests, so they paused the program to preserve the "limited remaining supply" for a potential surge of COVID-19 during the winter holiday season, per Politico. Over 600 million home tests were sent out to households nationwide before federal officials put the program on hold. To restart the program without additional congressional funding, officials relied on what the White House called "limited existing funding." Households can request four tests on the covidtests.gov website, with deliveries beginning next week.
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