The White House and the United States Postal Service are joining forces for one of the biggest mail calls of 2022.
White House officials on Friday finalized plans with the USPS to deliver 500 million coronavirus test kits to households nationwide, Fox News reported.
Officials hope to begin shipping the rapid test kits by mid-January, according to White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeff Zients. The kits will be sent to Americans who request them on a government website that has yet to be launched -- all at no cost.
"The deliveries of tests from manufacturers to the U.S. government will begin over the next week or so," Zients said in a press briefing on Wednesday. "Americans will start receiving free tests in the coming weeks. We will set up a free and easy system, including a new website, to get these tests out to Americans."
The tests will reportedly come from a variety of providers and distributors. Getting 500 million test kits in the mail is quite an undertaking, and the government is urging those waiting to be patient.
"Obviously, this is an unprecedented action: to have a half billion tests bought by the U.S. government and distributed for free," Zients said. "And we'll continue to do more and more to increase access to testing, given the extreme demand that's been driven by the transmissibility of Omicron."
The Postal Service was negotiating with its four labor unions to extend employment for approximately 40,000 seasonal workers in order to deliver the kits in a timely fashion, according to the Washington Post.
People who buy test kits on their own will also be able to get the cost reimbursed by their insurance, Zients added.
"We can expect that those tests will be reimbursed by commercial insurance starting next week," he said.
The government also has 20,000 locations across the country where people can receive an in-person COVID test for free.
President Joe Biden first announced his plans to distribute the testing kits last month. A formal announcement on the effort is expected as soon as next week.
COVID testing locations have been overwhelmed and at-home kits are nearly impossible to find as the demand for tests outpaces supply amid a surge of the highly contagious Omicron variant.
The U.S. is currently averaging more than 586,000 COVID cases a day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Omicron is responsible for 95.4% of new cases.
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