The free COVID-19 test kit arrived at U.S. homes this week but cannot claim more than that

On Jan. 13, U.S. President Joe Biden updated the administration's plan to provide free on-site COVID-19 testing, including a timeline for when the companion website will launch. Biden said at the time that the site was expected to launch "next week," referring to the week that began Jan. 16, an estimate that appeared accurate. The online ordering portal is now live, although the public will not be able to submit their orders until later this week.

The website for ordering free on-site COVID-19 testing in the United States is called COVIDtests.gov, and it is now accessible to anyone. According to the site's current homepage, visitors will be able to order free tests starting Jan. 19, though there will be a hard limit to this opportunity: each family cannot have more than four free tests.

Depending on the size of the U.S. household in general, this may be enough to test everyone in the family once, but it's not very useful for those who frequently visit elderly relatives to deliver groceries and handle housework. Still, having a completely free option for home testing is a great complement to the free vaccines and other pandemic-related services offered by the government.

The content that the site currently offers is very limited, with only a single page that introduces key details about the test, as well as a Spanish version of the site. The government noted on its webpage that it would not charge users for shipping costs, nor would it ask users to provide any payment details, such as credit card numbers, to place an order.

The subscription portal will launch on January 19, with the initial batch being 500 million COVID-19 test boxes, the ones originally announced in December 2021. Biden said in last week's update that the White House is already working to secure another batch of 500 million tests, eventually bringing the total number available to the public to at least 1 billion.

It's unclear whether the additional inventory will lead to an increase in the number of tests that each home can order, a change that could come over time depending on demand. The free testing program is offered in a wave of COVID-19 cases caused almost entirely by a variant of Concerned Omicron, which is far more contagious than previous versions of the virus.