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A little quietly on Tuesday, the federal government’s website to order free COVID-19 tests went live — one day earlier than anticipated.

National media outlets have reported that the site was in its beta phase on Tuesday and that the site was supposed to fully launch on Wednesday. Regardless, we found the execution of the website very easy to use. Essentially, you end up on a United States Postal Service page where you put in your residential information.

It takes about a minute — if that.

Once you confirm the order (which is free), the website takes you to a page that says COVID-19 tests will start being sent out in late January.

We know how some of you feel about the government, and we’ve heard how many of you feel about COVID-19. But we’ll remind you that more than 5 million people in the world have died from this virus, and more are dying every day.

It’s true that Omicron doesn’t appear to be as deadly, though hospitals are still being tested. East Alabama Health right over the state line in Alabama said that they had 96 patients hospitalized on Monday, a pandemic record.

If the government is giving away COVID-19 tests, why not take advantage of it? Regardless of how you feel about this pandemic, if you had the sniffles wouldn’t you feel better if you could quickly test yourself at home before going to see grandma?

The website is available at https://www.covidtests.gov/.