Letters to the Editor: We still need free COVID-19 tests. Why is it harder to get them?

To the editor: The excellent advice that people with symptoms should test themselves for COVID-19 (and thus limit transmission amid a persistent summer surge) would be easier to follow if the tests were cheaper to obtain.

My Medicare Advantage insurance (United Healthcare) will not cover the cost of buying a home test, even if prescribed by a doctor. The company treats it like any over-the-counter item.

At the same time, there is a great potential supply of tests. I still have a stack of tests with an FDA-extended expiration date of February or March 2024, and I suspect many other people do too. But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not reported further extensions of these dates for more than a year, suggesting no one has been checking. My tests still seem to work robustly well.

I understand why the manufacturers have no incentive to do this. However, public health would be served if this supply of tests was utilized.

Public health would also be better served if the guidelines for when ill people can be around others were clearer and more consistent among various medical providers, many of whom, in my experience, consider the current guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention too lax.

Carole Uhlaner, Irvine

..

To the editor: In the face of the serious spike in COVID-19 cases, “officials recommend testing repeatedly over as many as five days after the onset of symptoms to be sure.”

That’s more than $50 worth of testing for one person, who may have to decide between testing and eating, paying rent, buying gas and getting school supplies for the fall.

What happened to free COVID-19 testing? And, why don’t you include that resource for your readers?

Paula Glosserman, Los Angeles