Testing expired tests as cases rise: How to check if they still work

With the surge in COVID cases in the US, many Americans are uncovering unused at-home tests that they stored during the early stages of the pandemic. While these tests may have expired, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has extended the expiration dates for several popular at-home test products. To check if your old kits are still safe to use, you can visit the FDA’s website, which provides expiration information for each test brand.

Prior to using an expired test or discarding it, it is important to confirm whether the expiration date has been extended. According to Andrew Pekosz, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, using an expired test increases the risk of inaccurate results, which can jeopardize your health or the health of others.

As COVID continues to spread throughout the country, testing remains essential for protection. However, PCR tests, the traditional method of detecting COVID, have become more costly and less accessible. Additionally, the end of the public health emergency has modified how at-home tests are covered by insurance plans. Nevertheless, some local health clinics and community sites offer free at-home tests to the public.

Before purchasing new at-home tests, it is advisable to check if any expired tests in your medicine cabinet are still safe to use. Here is a step-by-step guide to help you check for extended expirations and other important information about these tests.

The FDA provides a list of COVID test brands on its website, either alphabetically or through a search box. The FDA indicates whether each brand has an extended expiration date and provides a PDF with new expiration dates for specific test lots.

To check if your test is still valid, find the test’s lot number, usually located next to the expiration date on the packaging, and compare it with the information in the PDF. For example, the “BinaxNOW COVID-19 Ag Self Test” with lot number 181922 has an extended expiration date of Oct. 11, more than a year after its printed date of Sept. 11, 2022, extending its shelf life to 22 months.

The FDA extends expiration dates when manufacturers provide data demonstrating that the test’s shelf life is longer than initially known. This allows for a reassessment of the stability and sensitivity of the tests over extended periods.

Most at-home tests entered the market prior to the emergence of new COVID variants like Eris. However, the FDA and experts confirm that existing at-home tests can detect COVID infections caused by these new strains, including omicron descendants.

Johns Hopkins’ Andrew Pekosz stated that at-home tests, along with tests conducted at medical institutions and hospitals, can identify infections caused by EG.5 and other circulating variants. The FDA recently announced that existing tests and medications used to detect and treat COVID-19 remain effective against the BA.2.86 omicron subvariant.

The CDC is closely monitoring BA.2.86 due to its significant number of genetic mutations. However, there is no evidence to suggest that BA.2.86 causes more severe infections than other variants. Recent studies from China

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