OLYMPIA, Wash. – The Washington State Department of Health (DOH) launched a website Friday that offers free at-home COVID tests to residents of the state.
Tests are available for order Friday but supplies are limited, according to Washington Secretary of Health Dr. Umair Shah.
One test kit, containing 4-5 tests, will be available per household. The DOH anticipates that demand for the tests will greatly exceed supply for the first few weeks but they will work to get more supplies into the state as needed.
The DOH currently has around 650,000 tests to distribute, enough to test just over a sixteenth of Washington’s nearly 8 million residents.
Gov. Inslee recently announced that Washington was in the process of procuring 5.5 million at-home tests, 1 million for schools, 1 million for local partners and 3.5 million that would be distributed to residents.
Only a fraction of those tests have made it to the state so far.
Shah asked that Washingtonians only request tests if they don’t already have tests in their homes or cannot reasonably find them at local stores or through insurance.
The website can be found here. Residents can input their zip code, fill out some contact information and request their test kit.
