Those Administration-Ordered Covid-19 Tests Will Arrive Late, but We Will Probably Still Need Them

Given a choice between having too many instant Covid-19 tests around and having too few, one would always choose having too many. So it is not necessarily a disaster that the Biden administration has now ordered one billion Covid-19 tests to distribute to the public for free. (With about 330 million Americans, that comes out to about three tests per person.)

Starting Wednesday, January 19, Americans will be able to order their free Covid-19 tests, and according to the White House, “tests will typically ship within 7-12 days of ordering.” If we generously assume that shipping takes only one day, then these government-purchased tests ordered on the first day of availability will start to arrive anywhere from January 27 (eight days from January 19) to January 31 (12 days from January 19).

Some people may wonder, considering the spectacular explosion of Covid-19 cases, whether the Omicron wave will have peaked by the time the tests arrive.

Has Omicron peaked? U.S. surgeon general Dr. Vivek Murthy said on CNN’s State of the Union yesterday that it depends on what part of the country you’re in. “But the good news is that there are parts of the country, New York, in particular, and other parts of the Northeast, where we are starting to see a plateau and, in some cases, an early decline in cases. The challenge is that nothing — the entire country is not moving at the same pace. The Omicron wave started later in other parts of the country. So we shouldn’t expect a national peak in the next coming days. The next few weeks will be tough.”

So the country will probably still need quite a few tests as January ends and February begins.

But the scale of the Omicron wave is jaw-dropping. Since Thanksgiving, the U.S. has had about 18 million new cases — which is roughly the number of cases from the beginning of the pandemic to mid-December 2020. The country currently has 23 million active cases; the highest peak before the Omicron wave was 10 million. And while the Omicron variant is not as likely to kill a person as previous variants, since Thanksgiving, about 71,000 Americans have succumbed to Covid-19 — which is about as many Americans who died from the virus from the start of the pandemic to early May 2020.

If President Biden had kept his promise that “this winter, you’ll be able to test for free in the comfort of your home and have some peace of mind,” more Americans would have known if that tickle in their throat or dry cough was a cold, the flu, or Covid-19 — and those Omicron wave numbers would likely be at least a little different.