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Massachusetts to distribute two million free rapid at-home Covid-19 tests
By adamg on Mon, 12/13/2021 - 10:09am
Gov. Baker announced the plan this morning, said the distribution will start with the 102 cities and towns with the highest percentages of poor families - who might otherwise have trouble paying for test kits.
The state will deliver the kits to the cities and towns, which will then decide how to distribute them to residents. The communities have a total of 3.7 million residents, Baker said.
The kits let users administer their own tests and get results within 15 minutes. Residents do not have to report positive results to the state. "They have proven to be a very effective tool" for people before they gather indoors with other people, Baker said.
Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders said the state spent $10 million to buy the tests, for which it will seek federal reimbursement.
Baker added that the state is negotiating with test makers on a long-term deal to sell lower-cost home test kits to cities and towns, possibly starting in January.
Baker said roughly 1.5 million Massachusetts residents have gotten booster shots so far. He said everybody who is eligible should get one; there are no shortages of the vaccines.
He added that free testing at various health centers and sites remain available.
Baker said there are no plans to bring back statewide mask mandate. "We're in a very different place than before," he said, pointing to all the people who have been vaccinated and the state's extensive testing. Although hospitalization rates have been rising of late, they are still far lower than at the same point last year, he said.
He added, "If you're not vaccinated, get vaccinated."
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Comments
What, are they going to just
What, are they going to just mail it to everyone?
No
I've updated the story.
Serious question
What does a single line quotation from Jen Psaki have to do with either the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, or the Baker Administration?
Especially now that Adam has added more details, so we know that the Baker answer would also be that they are not just going to be blindly mailing out test kits.
It just seems like this level of trolling is not even relevant on a Boston/Greater Boston focused website. I mean, I don't think Jen reads UHub, given a lack of local ties for her and a lack of a national focus here on Adam's little website...
I enjoyed the reference
.
Where's your important website
Maybe we can go look at it.
Those who can, do. Those who can't? They become critics.
However the people get them,
However the people get them, the tests will be independent of charge.
I live in Ireland and
I live in Ireland and Massachusetts. Just got back. Tests there are in every store and a 5 pack can be had for €10 or €3-5 each singly. The government was going to subsidize them but didn’t need to as the market brought the price down. I’d use one every other day in my small village with a good number of elderly about. Here they’re hard to find and 5 times the price.
FDA
Part of the issue is in FDA approvals, and how long that process takes here.
There are few companies that are authorized to produce/sell at home kits in the US, but more are needed. There’s a California maker (for example), who is waiting for FDA approval, who has already sold millions of at home tests in Europe. At this point, it may be 10’s of millions that could have been distributed here.
Another case of our govt being unable to get out of its own way.
Lincoln? Weston?
The list of towns is here.
It includes Lincoln and Weston. Am I missing something about the makeup of these towns?
Even wealthy towns have people living in poverty?
They used a metric, one that appears to be a reasonable choice, to make the decision.
Council on Aging/Housing Authority
For Weston, I bet it's the older people that will need subsidized tests.
One thing I remember about my time working in Weston is that it seemed to have more Housing Authority units than you might assume. There is also the Campion Center which I believe still houses retired Jesuit priests and at least one assisted living facility that, although is probably not cheap, I imagine an accountant can structure a living trust to where a resident's income is not truly reflective of their wealth and would thus skew income levels for their demographic lower.
Would love to know what dataset they used
I found this chart, from 2019, of family poverty rates for the towns. https://icommunityhealth.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/5-Poverty-data-t...
So Lincoln (2%) and Weston (4%) made the cut for free tests, but Maynard and Agawam (both 7%) and Ayer (12%) didn’t?! Hard to believe there’s been that much shift in percentages over the last few years.
Did they use individual maybe?
It would make sense in this case to use the metric that would include more seniors and folks living in institutional settings.
Well, the news release talked about family rates, but
Even if you look at individual rates, Lincoln at 3% and Weston at 5% are still lower than Maynard at 8%, Agawam at 9%, and Ayer at 13%.
If they’re using some weirdly nuanced criteria, they ought to at least be transparent about it. And they should be transparent enough to indicate which dataset they’re using when applying the criteria. Because some of these towns (added or omitted) really don’t make sense.
Everybody Sing!
The latest wave is frightful
But seeing family's delightful
So why not lay fears to rest
Instant Test Instant Test Instant Test
How about distributing some
How about distributing some M95 masks?