If you have tried to buy one at home COVID-19 test at a national pharmacy chain in the last few weeks you have probably turned off. It also does not get any easier soon, as schools welcome students back to personal learning, while the Omicron variant continues to rise Increase the demand for regular tests and further strain test supplies.
But some savvy consumers have discovered that home COVID-19 test are available from an unlikely source: the telemedicine company Ro. At the start of 2017, under the name Roman, the company billed itself as a health care company for men that provided discrete treatments for conditions including erectile dysfunction and hair loss.
Powered by Omicron, the number of COVID-19 cases has grown across the United States, and positive cases have peaked since the beginning of pandemic. The seven-day average of new cases has risen to nearly 340,000 from 187,000 a week ago, according to data from TD Securities.
Therefore, all kinds of COVID-19 tests at home on CVS Pharmacy’s website are currently sold out. Abbott’s BinaxNow kit, Quidel’s QuickVue home test kit, Orasure’s Inteliswab quick test kit, and the FlowFlex version are also sold out on the Walgreens website.
Product Availability Tracker Nowinstock.net, which performs the legwork for consumers, also indicates that almost all variants of COVID-19 tests at home are sold out across the expansive online retail landscape. COVID-19 tests are currently among the hottest and hardest to secure items, right next to video game consoles like Microsoft’s Xbox, Sony’s Playstation and Nintendo’s Switch.
Visit the Ros website today and you can purchase up to 12 packs of Intrivo Diagnostics’ On / Go COVID-19 fast antigen self-test kits per day. transaction. The only catch is that for $ 30 for two tests, the kits are a little more expensive than currently unavailable variants, like Abbott Labs’ BinaxNow antigen self-test kit, which when in stock sells for $ 23.99 at CVS Pharmacy.
Ro co-founder and CEO Zachariah Reitano said the On / Go test kit was among the company’s top three most in-demand products and services during the holiday season. Unlike other healthcare companies, including pharmacies, it is confident in its ability to keep tests in stock and serve consumers through peak periods.
“Our patients kept asking for tests, and we collaborated with the creators of the On / Go test to provide them,” Reitano said. “They have invested enormously in production capacity, although cases have ebbed out and flowed into the potential case, where there was a far more contagious variant that spread rapidly.”
Growth in distribution centers
Ro ended the year with 10 distribution centers across the United States, up from just three earlier in the year, enabling fast delivery of the time-sensitive tests.
“We had pharmacists and pharmacy technicians to come in during the holidays and work 12-18 hour days to make sure our patients got their COVID test on time,” Reitano added. He also does not expect to run out of test kits in the near future.
While shipping individual test kits is expensive for Ro, who pays for fast shipping and only earns when sending bulk tests, Reitano said the cost is worth it “to make sure people get it as quickly as possible.”
Meanwhile, the test kits have helped Ro acquire plenty of new customers, which Reitano hopes will look to the company to meet their health needs as well. Ro now has a range of offerings that extend beyond men’s sexual well – being to include fertility services, mental health care and diagnostic tests in the home for men and women.
“We started offering the tests to our members and other entrants,” Reitano said. “Hopefully, when we add new products and services, they will look to us and know that they are getting affordable prices and we do not want to take advantage of any moment.”
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