As of Sept. 30, households can order four free at-home COVID-19 tests via the USPS from the website Covidtests.gov , a dedicated site.
You fill out a form online, and they come to your post box. You don’t pay for shipping. The U.
S. Department of Health and Human Services is behind this, not a suspicious outfit. If you have trouble doing it or need help to order them, call 1-800-232-0233 for assistance.
Home tests are also available mostly in drugstores. But there’s still a whole lotta COVID goin’ around. I hear this from chatting with folks just casually.
Last week, we had a friend come to our house. He was staying with his parents. The three of them all got COVID.
When he visited us, he was feeling fine. The next day he called to say his COVID had come back, and he was testing positive again, so-called rebound COVID. Not his folks.
Another friend remarked that half the people she knew seemed to have COVID. Not scientific, but likely a fair assessment of what’s out there. The first friend said he took one of his folks to the emergency room, and it was full of patients out in the hallway with IVs, mostly due to COVID, he was told.
The death and hospitalization rates are nothing like in the bad old days, but perhaps as many as 23 to 24 people are dying from it per week. Data is not being as well kept now as during the past. The new variants are more contagious but not creating as severe disease as their ancestors, probably because of prior infections and residual immuni.