Beaufort Co. residents can now order free at-home COVID-19 tests from USPS. Here’s how
Beaufort County residents can now order four at-home COVID-19 tests for free from the federal government.
The United States Postal Service has launched a new web portal where people can request the tests, fulfilling a promise made by President Joe Biden.
The testing initiative was rolled out as Beaufort County again set a new record Tuesday for its seven-day average of confirmed COVID-19 cases.
An Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette reporter was able to order four tests at about 1 p.m. Tuesday. (The Biden administration had previously said that residents could start ordering the tests on Wednesday, but the USPS ordering portal was functional as of Tuesday afternoon.)
The portal is: https://www.covidtests.gov/
Orders will usually ship in seven to 12 days, USPS says. There is a limit of one order per residential address. Each order contains four rapid antigen tests.
Biden has pledged to buy 1 billion rapid tests to distribute for free nationwide. The administration has already secured 500 million tests for people to order via USPS.
The demand for coronavirus testing has skyrocketed in recent weeks amid the country’s surge of omicron infections.
South Carolina’s testing capacity, for example, has been stretched to its limit. Some residents waited in their cars for almost three hours last week to get tested at a state-run site on Hilton Head Island. And the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control publicly apologized Tuesday for the “substandard performance” of some testing vendors.
“While DHEC’s Public Health Lab, which has a daily capacity of 2,500 samples, is operating at that capacity and currently not experiencing any delays, large private labs such as Premier Medical Laboratory Services have fallen significantly behind due to issues ranging from the sheer volume of samples to COVID-related internal staffing shortages and still have not caught up or met contractually obligated deadlines to do so,” a DHEC news release read.
“DHEC knows the delays being experienced by some Carolinians are unacceptable and is taking every step to hold the responsible labs and vendors accountable and get results back in a timely fashion.”
Premier Medical Laboratory Services, or PMLS, is based in Greenville.
“Since mid December, there (has been) a large influx in testing demands due to the Omicron variant surge. Overnight, the laboratory saw an unprecedented 400% increase on December 17th and that continued to rise to 733% over the subsequent weeks. Premier immediately took action, employing just under 250 South Carolinians in just two and a half weeks and investing in millions of dollars in automation equipment during that time as well,” PMLS CEO Kevin Murdock wrote in a Tuesday statement. “We plan to return to normal turnaround times within the next week and a half to three weeks with continual improvement during that time.”
The Upstate facility had announced last Wednesday that it was hiring hundreds of new employees to keep up with the testing demand.
The company said a part-time “lab data entry clerk” position would pay $15 an hour and required “no experience.”
There were 48,249 viral test results recorded on Sunday alone in South Carolina.
Beaufort County, meanwhile, has continued to report a high number of new COVID-19 cases in recent days, according to data released Tuesday by state health officials.
The county set a new record Tuesday for its seven-day average of confirmed infections — 378 cases per day.
What we’re reading
For additional context on the Lowcountry’s coronavirus surge, it’s helpful to monitor scientific studies and national news about omicron.
Here’s what The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette’s COVID-19 reporter has recently been reading:
The public library is the latest place to pick up a coronavirus test. Librarians are overwhelmed. — The Washington Post
Omicron thwarts some of the world’s most-used COVID vaccines — Nature
Countywide data
Here are the latest Beaufort County coronavirus numbers from DHEC:
New cases reported Tuesday: 333 confirmed, 27 probable
New cases reported Monday: 348 confirmed, 30 probable
New cases reported Sunday: 475 confirmed, 39 probable
New cases reported Saturday: 432 confirmed, 49 probable
New deaths reported from Saturday to Tuesday: 3 confirmed, 0 probable
Seven-day average of cases: 378 confirmed infections per day
Two-week case rate: 3,119 cases per 100,000 people
Vaccination rate: 56.5% of residents have been fully vaccinated (one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine or two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines)
ZIP code data since Jan. 1
Bluffton ZIP code, 29910: 1,530 cases
Hilton Head Island ZIP code, 29926: 567 cases
Hilton Head Island ZIP code, 29928: 327 cases
Okatie ZIP code, 29909: 518 cases
Beaufort ZIP code, 29902: 798 cases
West of Beaufort ZIP code, 29906: 1,098 cases
St. Helena Island ZIP code, 29920: 373 cases
Jasper County numbers
Jasper County reported 52 confirmed cases and five probable infections Tuesday. No new COVID-19 deaths were announced.
