Dear Yellow Jackets,

The U.S. government announced last week that every household in the U.S. is eligible to order four free at-⁠home Covid-⁠19 tests. These tests can be ordered from the United States Postal Service (USPS); orders will begin shipping at no cost starting in late January.

You may order your kits on the USPS COVID-19 Home Kit website, which is now live. To see the latest guidance for Covid-19, visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH) websites.

College students are eligible to order these tests. However, because of their multi-unit nature and incompatibility with USPS coding systems, campus residence halls can pose challenges for determining what constitutes “household.” Specifically, each unit – regardless of the number of actual residents – will be considered one household by the USPS. This would also pertain off-campus residents that live with other roommates.  As such, only one resident for each unit can order the kits and then share them with other residents in the unit.

The USPS is working on a fix to resolve this coding issue. In the meantime, the USPS recommends filing a service request for assistance in the ordering process at https://emailus.usps.com/s/the-postal-store-inquiry or contacting their help desk at 1-800-ASK-USPS (1-800-275-8777) to help address the issue.

To maximize the likelihood of receiving your kits, the USPS recommends that students who reside on campus should treat this as if they are receiving regular mail to the residence hall or congregate living facility. They also recommend students be specific on the room or apartment they live in, as well as use the ZIP Code plus four number suffix. A useful tool for finding the ZIP Code plus four number suffix is here: https://tools.usps.com/zip-code-lookup.htm?byaddress. All you need to do is put the recipients address into this and it will provide the full mailing address in the USPS system.

If you wish to receive the Covid-19 vaccine, remember that University System of Georgia (USG) students can get vaccinated on USG campuses. Check with health.gatech.edu/coronavirus/vaccine for more information.

As a reminder: if you test positive while using one of these at-home test kits, please isolate within your residence and report your positive result to the Georgia Tech Contact Tracing team using this form. After completing that report, a member of that team will contact you with further instructions.

If you are asymptomatic, we encourage Georgia Tech students to take advantage of our asymptomatic testing program. Symptomatic students can contact Stamps Health Services for an appointment or participate in the drive-up symptomatic testing established earlier this month.

Best wishes for the 2022 Lunar New Year (Year of the Tiger)!