Approximately 32 million rapid coronavirus tests sent to states by the federal government in September have gone unused and are piling up in storage facilities, and health officials say they are approaching their six-month expiration date.
The excess tests came from a purchase of 142 million rapid tests developed by Abbott Laboratories. Going unused, the tests have cost the federal government nearly $160 million, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.
The usage of the rapid tests, BinaxNOW, was delayed by some states because health officials were unsure whether they would receive a continuing supply of tests from the government and opted to use tests from other companies.
Tests were purchased for the primary purpose of keeping infections down in institutions such as schools, nursing homes, and prisons.
A Texas Education Agency plan for COVID-19 testing, which uses the BinaxNOW kits, said some expire as early as February 2021.
According to a readout by Abbott, the tests cost $5 for individual purchases and take only 15 minutes to 30 minutes to render results demonstrating “sensitivity of 97.1% and specificity of 98.5% in clinical study.”
“The demand has just not been there,” Myra Kunas, Minnesota’s interim public health lab director, said of the stockpiled tests.
The news of rapid tests accumulating in storage comes after the United States recorded a massive drop in COVID-19 cases since mid-January.
Since Jan. 12, the seven-day average of new cases has decreased by nearly 64%, according to the Atlantic’s COVID-19 Tracking Project. On Friday, the U.S. dropped below 100,000 average daily new cases, reaching levels not seen since November.
The drop in reported infections coincides with an overall decrease in testing, which fell 8 percentage points last week, marking the third week in a row for a decline for that metric.
Health officials have underscored the significance of testing populations for COVID-19, saying that doing so contributes to reducing virus transmission rates by alerting those who may be infected to self-isolate.
“The testing decline we’re now seeing is almost certainly due to a combination of reduced demand as well as reduced availability or accessibility of testing,” the COVID-19 Tracking Project team said.
Johns Hopkins University data reported 331 million tests have been gathered in the U.S. to date. The data also showed more than 27 million people in the U.S. have had COVID-19 infections and that 485,728 have died.
According to NPR’s COVID-19 vaccine tracker, 4.2% of the U.S. population has received both doses of the coronavirus vaccine.
