As we head into the heart of the cold and dark Seattle winter, news reports are all a-twitter (yes, pun intended) about the so-called “tridemic” of RSV, flu, and Covid. RSV has been especially hard on kids, and the flu season has already been called the most severe in 13 years. If there’s a ray of good news in any of this, it would seem to be that our region continues to show a relatively low rate of new Covid cases being reported (according to the King County Department of Health website, however, a recent data breach may have resulted in under-reporting in October).
If you’re like me, you jumped on the offers from the federal government and the state to have free Covid test kits shipped to your home. Many of those kits have reached or surpassed their official pull dates (although some have been extended). Or maybe you depleted your stockpile obsessively testing over Thanksgiving, or maybe it was all that traveling you did over the summer. But you may now find yourself either with no test kits to get you through the winter, or you’re stuck with a bunch of expired ones.
Here is another bit of good news: While the federal government ended its free test kit distribution through the USPS in September, the State of Washington’s continues through the end of the year. If you visit this site, you can enter your zip code and test kits will be sent via Amazon (I checked 98105 and 98103). Details of the program, including limits on the number you can order, can be found here.
Stay healthy, Wallingford!