Where can I purchase bulk covid tests for at home testing?

August 26, 2021 10:05 AM

I'd like to have a stack of at home covid tests for myself to use as needed. Where should I purchase reputable tests?

I am vaccinated, but allergies constantly have me playing the 'covid or allergies?' game. I am voluntarily returning to office for half of the week starting next week. Everyone will be wearing masks in the office.

I'd like to be able to test myself for covid every morning before work (3 days a week). Where should I purchase tests? Ideally I could get a bulk order and it would be under $5 per test, but I'll review all options.

posted by pumpkinlatte to Health & Fitness (8 answers total)

I just purchased a 6-pack (12 tests total, since each has 2 tests) of the BinaxNow antigen test, which tests whether you have a current infection and can catch asymptomatic infections, directly from the manufacturer, Abbot Labs. It was $143 and it shipped 2 business days later. They appear to be out of stock currently, and I don't know how quickly they restock.

I've also seen this specific test for sale in person at Walgreens, and online via CVS, Walgreens, and whatever EMed is--though stock seems to fluctuate rapidly in all online and physical locations. Some drugstores keep them behind the pharmacy counter and you have to ask for them, though the Walgreens where I bought my first one had a big in-your-face endcap display.

I haven't seen prices below ~$23 per 2-pack, though I've seen them higher. The purchase limit seems to be 6, everywhere.

Note that the mfr recommends serial testing 3 days apart, not every day.
posted by rhiannonstone at 12:04 PM on August 26, 2021 [2 favorites]

Please note that these antigen tests are good for confirming that you may have covid if you're symptomatic, but they mostly miss positive cases if you're not symptomatic. That's a lot of money to spend on a tool that isn't that accurate.
posted by mcgsa at 12:53 PM on August 26, 2021 [2 favorites]

Check your local library—mine provides those BinaxNow tests for free.
posted by girlmightlive at 2:07 PM on August 26, 2021 [2 favorites]

I have been buying BinaxNow tests from area pharmacies and also bought some from Amazon, though they took 3 weeks to ship because of shortages. Abbot should be ramping manufacturing tests back up, so hopefully they'll be more available as we move into fall/winter. With tax, they're about $25 for a 2-pack.

I use them mostly when I want to spend time mask-off, indoors with people who are outside my family pod. We all take a test and 15 minutes later, we have results. I like the BinaxNow tests because they have high specificity (accuracy of negative result) which means they're very accurate if the result is negative. I want the negative result to be extremely accurate because that's what makes taking my mask off OK. If there's a positive result, I'd retest with PCR for accuracy because the test's sensitivity (accuracy of positive result) is not as high. But, for my needs, I am willing to sacrifice accuracy with a positive result for assurance that a negative is really a negative.
posted by quince at 6:02 PM on August 26, 2021 [1 favorite]

I’m afraid you’ve got that backwards, quince. The BinaxNow tests have a very high false negative rate—in the study linked above, 40 people tested positive using traditional PCR tests. Only eight also got a positive results using BinaxNow. That’s 32 false negatives, for a pretty dismal 20% specificity.

In contrast, there were no false positives (100% sensitivity).

Point-of-care antigen tests will tell you if you have covid, but they cannot reliably assure you that you do not.
posted by jesourie at 11:33 PM on August 26, 2021 [5 favorites]

You're correct on the merits, but I'm afraid you have your terms backward, jesourie:

In total, 1,540 asymptomatic students provided paired samples (Table). Forty (2.6%) samples tested positive by rRT-PCR; of these, 8 (20%) also tested positive by BinaxNOW. We did not observe any false-positive BinaxNOW results (100% specificity).

A "sensitive" test is positive when the condition is true; a "specific" test is negative when the condition is false.

Picture a mousetrap: it's "sensitive" if it always trips when a mouse is on it – even if it trips a lot when there isn't! And it's "specific" if it doesn't trip when there's no mouse on it – even if it never trips at all. Good mousetraps are both sensitive and specific: they don't trip until there's a mouse on them, and then they reliably trip.
posted by nicwolff at 10:24 AM on August 27, 2021 [3 favorites]

Argh! I read and re-read the Wiki article about sensitivity and specificity multiple times before posting and *still* managed to do it wrong. Serves me right for posting while tired.

I hope that doesn't overshadow what I was trying to say, though: point-of-care antigen tests are, and have always been, only useful for identifying positive cases. They have a very high false negative rate and are not reliable indicators of a lack of infection.
posted by jesourie at 11:23 AM on August 27, 2021 [2 favorites]

This doesn't help you right now, but Cue Health is planning to offer their home testing setup for individual purchase for about USD$250 (right now it's something that some medical clinics and some businesses and institutions, such as the NBA, use). It's a device that takes single-use cartridges and gives results within 15-20 minutes, and the testing is molecular which should be more accurate than antigen tests. It's not clear how much each individual test cartridge will be but I feel like I heard somewhere that it'll be about the same price as the drugstore antigen tests, like about $15-$20 per unit.
posted by brainwane at 12:36 PM on August 28, 2021