Orange County residents can now test themselves for COVID-19 in the safety of their homes.
Officials this week expanded an at-home testing program to the entire county as part of a continuing move to make testing more accessible to residents.
The program began a little over two weeks ago when the county ordered 500,000 at-home tests. The first few weeks were reserved for residents of Santa Ana and Anaheim, the cities hit hardest by the virus.
“We want to make it accessible to all segments of the population,” county Supervisor Andrew Do said in an interview. “There are some who may be reluctant to go into a clinic, hospital or drive-through and have to deal with people.”
Researchers in the Henry Samueli School of Engineering at the University of California, Irvine announced promising results in the development of a noninvasive at-home antigen test to detect the spike of SARS-CoV-2 proteins in saliva.