Last week, Penn State announced its plans for an in-person spring semester. The decision was largely met with relief, but some have concerns due to locally high COVID-19 hospitalizations and the omicron variant’s growing dominance.

As part of Penn State’s plans, students and employees can order free at-home COVID-19 test kits. The university has once again partnered with Vault Health to provide each student or employee with up to 12 free saliva-based COVID-19 testing kits that can be completed at home through a Zoom visit.

“I urge all of our students to order a free, mail-in Vault Health test kit to get tested for COVID-19 before returning to campus so that they can isolate at home if they are COVID-19 positive. Any student or employee can currently order up to 12 Vault Health kits for at-home use,” Kelly Wolgast, director of the COCC, said. “I want to emphasize that students at all campus locations can take actions now to order a test and complete it next week to know their health status before returning to a campus.” 

Students and employees can order their tests through an online form and receive them in four business days. Only four of the 12 tests can be ordered at a time.

Unvaccinated students and employees are required to get tested for COVID-19 weekly this spring. Although Penn State is not requiring pre-arrival COVID-19 testing for students or employees, folks can drop in to the White Building from January 7 to 9 to get tested.