A new U.S. government website where Americans can order the delivery of up to four free at-home Covid-19 test per home address launched without much fanfare on Tuesday. By the time word got out on Wednesday, the URL COVIDtests.gov was mobbed by those looking to sign up. At midday, traffic to the site in English and Spanish constituted almost half of all U.S. government website traffic.
Additionally, traffic to other websites associated with the USPS – which handles COVIDtests.gov – stood at 10 percent of government website traffic.
There have been no reports of the website buckling under the traffic. Complaints about the new service were not absent, however, and centered around people’s addresses being incompatible. This happened at some apartment buildings with multiple tenants, for people using P.O. boxes or those whose addresses were not listed as residential.
This chart shows the percent of U.S. government web traffic, by webpage (on Jan 18, 2022 at 1 p.m. EST).
