President Joe Biden has made “free” – aka taxpayer-funded – COVID-19 tests available to Americans as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) claim related hospitalizations have increased by just over seven percent in the past month. What the Biden White House hasn’t publicized, however, is many of the “free” COVID tests are expired.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently extended their estimate as to how long the tests would remain ‘effective’ in identifying whether an individual is infected with the virus or not – apparently to calm concerns among Americans worried the free tests would be useless. Additionally, last week, Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced it had awarded $600 million to U.S. manufacturers to begin the production of new COVID-19 at-home tests.
Despite the FDA guidance, many medical professionals are still warning consumers to be wary of expired tests.
Nam Tran, a senior director of clinical pathology at UC Davis Health, cautioned, “Would you drink milk that expired months ago?” Tran said Americans are better off using a new test than one which has reached or surpassed its expiration date as expired tests can give false results, adding: “Chemicals can go bad. The antibodies used to detect the virus can degrade due to time, heat and air exposure. Even humidity getting into the test kit can impact the paper strip, among other issues.”
According to the CDC, the COVID tests currently in circulation will work with the newly announced Pirola and Eris variants of the virus.
