Free Republic

President Joe Biden will announce a plan Tuesday to send out 500 million coronavirus tests to Americans who want them, in his latest attempt to slow the spread of the virus.

The surge of interest in testing for the COVID-19 pathogen has led to some innovative tests and test strategies, including at-home tests. However, the FDA has indicated that it is wary of both at-home testing and specimen collection in other than supervised settings, a policy that is meeting with criticism from some quarters, but not all. Everlywell Inc., of Austin, Texas, had announced March 18 that it had a test kit available for shipment that would have permitted at-home collection of samples that could have been analyzed via telehealth. The company indicated it had 30,000 such kits available, but the...

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is under fire for being too slow to approve at-home tests in the coronavirus crisis. Earlier this month, the agency announced it would allow labs to sell tests, and apply for emergency approval 15 days later. Several companies jumped to offer their tests in a use-at-home format, and some even began selling them. Most of the tests were to be taken by an individual at home, and then would be mailed to an approved lab for analysis – a process already used for many medical tests. But on March 20, the FDA updated their...