Don’t throw away your old at-home COVID tests. Some expiration dates have been extended

Dana Branham, Oklahoman
·3 min read
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Have an expired at-home COVID-19 test in your stockpile? Don’t toss it just yet.

The shelf life for many at-home rapid tests for COVID-19 has been extended, so your test might be OK to use beyond the printed expiration date.

As test manufacturers gathered more data over time about their tests’ stability, they could request shelf-life extensions for their at-home COVID tests, and the Food and Drug Administration has authorized extensions for many of the tests.

More:COVID-19 or allergies? When to get tested and 3 things to watch for, per an Oklahoma expert

For example, one brand of tests that have printed expiration dates in July are now good until January 2023, according to the FDA.

The federal government had been shipping free rapid COVID-19 tests to households across the country since early 2022, but the program ended this month. So it’s worth double-checking whether your expired COVID tests might still be good.

How to check your tests

The FDA has a list of at-home COVID-19 tests and details about their shelf lives on the agency’s website.

To check whether your test is still good, find the manufacturer of your test on the list, then compare the printed expiration date on the test box to the corresponding updated expiration date online.

What to know about COVID testing

At-home COVID-19 tests are generally rapid antigen tests. You perform the test yourself and get your results back at home in about 15 minutes, but they’re less sensitive than a PCR test.

If it’s early in the course of a person’s COVID-19 infection, an antigen test might not be able to detect the virus, so you might have to test again in a few days to rule out a false negative.

More:Updated COVID boosters are here. Here's how and where to get an OKC appointment

PCR tests can detect much lower levels of the virus, so you’re less likely to get a false negative. They’re generally done at a testing site and take 24 to 48 hours to get results.

To find a PCR test in the Oklahoma City area, go to testokc.com.

Oklahoma’s COVID status

From August into early September, Oklahoma has recorded between 9,000 and 10,000 new COVID-19 cases a week; that dropped to about 6,800 in the state’s most recent epidemiology report. Those figures don't include any at-home testing, so the true number of infections is almost certainly higher.

Most cases now are the highly contagious BA.5 subvariant of the omicron variant.

In the state’s most recent report, 292 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in Oklahoma, including 59 in intensive care.

Both COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are still well below the highs they reached in early 2022, when the omicron variant took hold.

As of last week, the statewide average levels of COVID-19 in wastewater were at low levels. Since wastewater testing doesn’t rely on individuals seeking out testing and having it reported by the state, it’s considered an accurate way to measure how much of the virus is spreading in the community.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: How to know if your expired at-home COVID-19 test is still OK to use