Orange County Starts Providing Free Home COVID-19 Test Kits

Orange County began distributing COVID-19 home test kits this week.

The tests are based on saliva without the need for more invasive samples.

Home PCR testing is already in high demand in Orange County.

“We have distributed over 300 test kits,” said Izabella Sahakian, operations manager of Families Together in Orange County. “We had a very high demand for testing yesterday. We were extremely overwhelmed.”

Families Together of Orange County is one of five clinics chosen to deploy Ambry Genetics’ saliva collection kit.

The Orange County Health Care Agency is allowing access to the first week of the program to only communities most affected by the virus in Anaheim and Santa Ana. After that, it will be open to all residents of Orange County.

To get the free kits, people can register on the OCHCA website to have them mailed to their homes within two days, or can pick them up in person.

Sahakian estimates that at least 500 of these tests have come out of his clinic since Monday.

Instructions are available in several languages. Once the saliva is supplied, the lid is placed and the labels are attached, the tube goes into a laboratory sample bag to be shipped in a postage-paid envelope.

The company behind the kits claims that when the saliva sample is collected correctly, the test is estimated to be nearly 100% accurate in detecting COVID-19.

Local leaders say OC is the first county in the country to make these home saliva PCR tests available to the public.