(CNN) Two US counties will receive a surge of free, rapid, at-home Covid-19 tests in an effort to study how people use them and how that impacts Covid-19 trends in the community, according to an announcement Wednesday by the National Institutes of Health. Each household will receive 25 tests, which is enough to test two people per household three times a week for up to a month. "This testing initiative is the first of this scale to attempt to make free, rapid, self-administered tests available community-wide in order to determine their effectiveness in our nation's comprehensive response to the COVID-19 pandemic," NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins said in a statement Wednesday. "We hope to gain foundational data that can guide how communities can use self-administered tests to mitigate viral transmission during this and future pandemics." In collaboration with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, researchers will capture anonymous data from the tests, plus measures of Covid-19 in those two cities.

Source: CNN March 31, 2021 14:48 UTC