Your Stockpile of Covid Tests May Be Expired…Or Not. Here’s How to Check
Recently, after a long bout of hot temperatures and zero rain, we got a LOT of rain and cooler temps like, overnight. I didn’t know that this abrupt shift can trigger allergies (I don’t really have allergies on a regular basis, idk how they work) so when I woke up in the middle of the night with a super sore throat I was convinced I had Covid and went down a good ol’ 4am anxiety spiral.
I had a stockpile of tests, so I grabbed one and got a negative result… but then I checked the expiration date. It was expired, even if you count the extended expiry dates they’re giving test kits now. Naturally my anxious mind decided it was a false negative, and I was sure all my test kits were expired and now I just had a pile of useless trash I was hoarding for years. Like I said, I have SO MANY tests, because I ordered them every month while the state was offering them, but I’m also Covid conscious and never stopped masking in crowded spaces so I haven’t actually needed to use all these tests. I had seven boxes (of 5 tests each) and four were expired. BUT, it was super easy to find out the status of my Covid tests, thanks to iHealth’s easy tool:
iHealth was the provider of all the free tests in Washington, but hopefully whatever tests you got also have such a good system. You CAN go to the FDA website, find your test manufacturer, and read all the lot numbers of your tests and figure it out, but I found it infinitely more simple to just put all the lot numbers into the iHealth page and be told my new expiration dates (which I then wrote on each box, because I immediately forgot). Could you just count three months from the date on the box? I GUESS, but some of us don’t have brains that work that way, so stop bragging. I need to be explicitly told a date otherwise I will doubt my own counting abilities, plus I’m bad at knowing the numbers of the months… Look, this is helpful for some of us!
So, let this be your reminder to check those Covid tests you have stuffed in your closet that you never really think about. And if they’re expired, get rid of them (pro tip: I saved the swabs to use with Nozin). You can’t afford a false negative - Covid isn’t over AND we’re in a surge right now.
