Delivering Free COVID Test Kits to Doorsteps

With another potential wintertime COVID surge looming over the 2022 holiday season, Contra Costa Health wanted to ensure the community had the tools and information they needed to make healthy choices.

A mail-order home test kit program was launched, inviting people to request free test kits by phone or online, and received over 900 orders in the first four hours. Staff worked quickly to ship tests, delivering more than 59,000 tests to people’s doorsteps between November and January, and distributed over 650,000 free test kits to medical facilities, skilled nursing facilities, community-based organizations, county libraries and offices of elected officials.

The community was encouraged to stock up on home test kits, to test if they felt sick before gathering with others and to stay home if they tested positive. “We want these test kits to be a staple in people’s medicine cabinets like aspirin or band-aids,” said Dr. Sofe’ Mekuria, deputy health officer for the county. “Testing gives people the information they need to make healthy choices and reduce the spread of COVID, especially during the winter holiday season when families and friends gather indoors.”

Increased testing helped reduce the spread of the virus, with COVID rates at the end of 2022 not nearly as high compared to the previous year.