U.S. reverses plan to shut down free COVID test program

The Trump administration reversed a plan to shut down the government website that ships free coronavirus tests to households late Tuesday, after The Washington Post reported that the administration was preparing to end the program and was evaluating the costs of destroying or disposing of tens of millions of tests.

The Post reported on Tuesday afternoon that the administration was evaluating the costs of destroying tests that would otherwise be provided free to Americans, citing two officials at a federal public health preparedness agency and internal documents reviewed by The Post. A half-hour before the planned shutdown, Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon sent a statement to The Post confirming that COVIDtests.gov would shut down at 8 p.m. Tuesday. But he said the tests would not be destroyed and “will remain in inventory until they meet their expiration date.”

“With COVID-19 infections decreasing after a winter peak, we are transitioning away from government-distributed at-home tests to the commercial market just as we have in the past,” that first statement said. “Tests ordered through COVIDtests.gov before 8 p.m. EST, February 18, 2025, will be shipped.”

Then, 12 minutes before the site’s planned shutdown, Nixon sent a new statement saying COVIDtests.gov would not be pulled offline at this time.

“With COVID-19 infections decreasing after a winter peak, we are in the process of regular discussions on closing this round of the COVID-19 test ordering program. At this point, the program is still open, and we will share additional updates as needed,” the second statement said.

Internal documents show that officials at HHS had been considering two options: either disposing of or continuing to ship more than 160 million tests, valued at more than half a billion dollars. Only a small fraction of the tests are expired, according to the two officials.

Documents also show that employees were asked Tuesday to identify initiatives, projects and webpages related to covid-19 as part of a process to comply with an executive order. President Donald Trump signed an order rescinding many of President Joe Biden’s executive orders, including some on the covid response and increasing the testing supply.

On Tuesday afternoon before The Post reported its story, the two officials, who shared details of the plans on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about them, did not know whether a final decision had been made on what to do with the stockpile of tests maintained by the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR).

“It’s expensive to stockpile these tests,” said Dawn O’Connell, a former ASPR chief who served in the Biden administration but had no knowledge of the current planning. “Destruction costs a significant amount of money, but hanging on to them costs a significant amount of money.”

Consumers would still be able to purchase tests over the counter if the government program were paused or ended.

The decision on coronavirus tests represents yet another turning point in the fight against a virus that has posed political and public health challenges for Trump since the pandemic began five years ago. Trump initially touted his coronavirus response as a defining moment of his first presidency, labeling himself a “wartime president” as the virus surged in early 2020 and the nation reeled.

But he came to resent the advice provided by public health experts, accusing them of attempting to politically damage him by encouraging shutdowns. Trump has since distanced himself from the government’s coronavirus response, including signing an executive order last week aimed at ending Biden-era coronavirus vaccination mandates in schools and universities. The anger toward public health agencies has helped fuel his new assault on the federal bureaucracy.

The program to ship free coronavirus tests directly to American households has been paused and revived more than a half-dozen times since it began, in keeping with the threat posed by the virus. It was paused, for example, in March 2024 and revived in September for the seventh time, in advance of the winter respiratory illness season.

Public health experts agree that there is no urgent need for free tests to be sent to American households now, given that covid levels are lower than earlier waves. But they said keeping the tests on hand is an insurance policy in case the virus evolves to cause a large outbreak again.

Since January 2020, the ASPR has provided more than 2 billion free over-the-counter tests, according to a news release. It is best known for the more than 900 million tests sent directly to households that requested them on COVIDtests.gov in a partnership with the U.S. Postal Service. The ASPR also provides free tests to community organizations that distribute them locally, such as nursing homes and health departments.

“Destroying an asset that was paid for by the American people, that doesn’t make any sense,” said Tom Inglesby, who was White House national coordinator for coronavirus testing from the end of 2021 to April 2022. In the event that covid becomes resurgent again, “we need to be able to figure out who is sick, who is not sick, who needs medicine, who is, in fact, contagious, who may be someone who’s vulnerable. These diagnostics really help you make really good decisions, help families make good decisions about how to stay healthy.”

An internal document reviewed by The Post described the agency’s plans to shut down the free coronavirus test distribution as part of an effort to comply with Trump’s recision of a Biden executive order on his first day in office. That rescinded 2021 order focused on a national testing strategy, including expanding the test supply.

Ashish Jha, who led the White House covid-19 response from March 2022 to April 2023, said the stockpiled tests are valuable to have on hand.

“The virus is not posing a major public health threat now,” Jha said. But he added that trashing the tests “feels like an act of self-destruction here. It’s going to be expensive. And it takes away a tool that the administration would want to use in the scenario that we get a highly immune-evasive variant.”

The Biden administration policy was to stockpile enough tests to last six to eight weeks so the country would never again experience the shortages that hit the United States in late 2021, “when no one could find an over-the-counter test,” O’Connell said.

As the covid threat diminished, the agency did not want to let the tests expire on shelves. Officials opened up the free tests program, with “tens of thousands being ordered every day,” O’Connell recalled.

Especially during the winter, when respiratory illnesses tend to peak, having free coronavirus tests meant that individuals were able to “keep it in your medicine cabinet to distinguish between flu and covid,” she said. “I thought there was value and continue to think that there’s value.”

The United States is experiencing a record influenza season, one of the worst in more than a decade. About 1 in every 13 visits to a doctor are for flu-like illness, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the highest level since 2002.