Rapid COVID-19 Tests Are Coming to the Home

The COVID-19 diagnostic landscape in the U.S. is expected to change significantly this week as several companies are making the tests available through retailers. Abbott Laboratories, Ellume, and LabCorp are offering tests through CVS Health Corp.

Woonsocket, R.I.-based CVS will sell Abbott’s BinaxNOW Self-Test; Ellume’s Home Test Kit; and LabCorp.’s Pixel Home Collection Test Kit.

Abbott said its test will also be available at Walgreens and Walmart. LabCorp began selling its testing kits at Walgreens earlier this month, according to a report from Reuters.

"Let's not back down on testing, let's double down on it," Thomas Quinn, M.D., professor of medicine and pathology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said in a release from Abbott. "As long as COVID remains unpredictable, there's an important role for the corner pharmacy and the central lab to tackle this virus in tandem, which gives this country the best chance to detect and screen for COVID-19."

The testing piece of the COVID-19 story in the U.S. is rapidly giving ground to the vaccine response and rollout. About 39% of the U.S. population has received at least one dose of the vaccine and nearly 24% has been fully vaccinated, according to a report from CNBC, citing data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There have been about 32.4 million cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. with 581,000 succumbing to the virus, according to worldometers.info. The website goes on to show that nearly 25 million have recovered from COVID-19.