Free At-Home COVID Tests Will Be Delivered To Oceanside Residents

OCEANSIDE, CA — Starting Jan. 19, Oceanside residents and all Americans can begin ordering free at-home COVID-19 rapid tests, the Biden administration announced Friday.

Orders for up to four tests per household can be placed using COVIDtests.gov. A yet-to-be-released phone number will also be available to place orders for those without access to computers or the internet. The tests are expected to ship within seven to 12 days of ordering.

In addition to being free, there will be no shipping costs and no credit card information will be required, officials said.

The COVIDtests.gov website was created with help from the U.S. Digital Service, a program used to improve federal websites after the less-than-stellar 2013 rollout of the HealthCare.gov website for Affordable Care Act health insurance.

"We're ready for this," an official told reporters about the COVIDtests.gov website.

News of the website comes a day after President Biden announced that his administration will buy another 500 million at-home coronavirus tests for Americans, in addition to his plans announced last month to order 500 million tests. He also said the White House will make high-quality masks available for free, with details coming out next week.

In Oceanside and around the region, at-home COVID tests have been very hard — if not impossible — to find, with most retailers saying they are out of stock.

The lack of supply comes at a time when San Diego County is seeing rapid COVID spread and increased pressure on hospitals.

San Diego County reported 14,734 new COVID-19 infections and 11 deaths in its latest data as an "unprecedented" rate of cases and hospitalizations continue to roll in.

Thursday's data increased the county's cumulative totals to 558,356 cases and 4,540 deaths since the pandemic began.

COVID-related hospitalizations in San Diego County increased by 76 to 1,226 on Thursday, which follows a record-setting weekend when hospitals struggled to keep up. Hospitalizations have increased at a steeper rate than when the county reached its peak -- 1,725 on Jan. 11, 2021, according to the latest state figures.

Of the hospitalized patients reported Wednesday, 173 were in intensive care, up four from the previous day.

According to state data, COVID-19 hospitalizations more than tripled in the past 30 days.

"We expected to see a surge after the holidays, especially with the arrival of the more transmissible Omicron variant, but these numbers are unprecedented in this pandemic," said Dr. Wilma Wooten, county public health officer. "The virus is everywhere in our community. We must all step up now and re-dedicate ourselves to the precautions that we know work."
Wooten reminded residents that the Omicron variant can be dangerous or deadly, despite what she said is a common misconception.

There were 54,809 new tests reported Thursday, and the seven-day average positivity rate was 28.8%, up from 28.1% on Wednesday.

— City News Service contributed to this article.

This article originally appeared on the Oceanside-Camp Pendleton Patch