This is the contrast between the US and Europe in COVID testing

While Americans express frustration over the shortage of COVID-19 home testing, our reality is different in Europe.

When I invited some friends to spend New Years Eve at my apartment in Berlin, it was free and quick for everyone to get tested beforehand. And when one of the guests told us two days later that he had COVID, it was cheap and easy for us to keep getting tested until we all made sure we hadn’t caught it.

In contrast, when my sister in Washington state fell ill on New Years Eve, the fastest test appointment she could find was for January 8. The earliest you could get a home test was January 14.

Thus, on January 2, he waited in his car for four hours to get a PCR test. She didn’t find out she was positive until days later. By this time, it was more of a confirmation of what she already knew than an early warning to anyone else.

With the super-transmissible omicron variant, a record wave of cases has been unleashed in the United States. Prices for home test kits have skyrocketed up to three times their usual cost as demand increases. Meanwhile, exasperated people fill emergency rooms looking for tests that could be performed much more safely in a dedicated center or at home.

Biden has used just how much power to accelerate manufacturing and has also pledged to order 500 million rapid tests to ship directly to homes across the country; shipments are scheduled to begin this month. But it’s unclear how quickly the 500 million will be available.

In this sense, things are really better in Europe. There are at least three centers offering free state-subsidized rapid tests just steps from my apartment in the German capital. But if that becomes difficult for people, we can buy a test for as little as 3 euros (US $ 3.39) in pharmacies or online. In the United States, some two-test packages cost $ 75 or more.

Paradoxically, our easy access to testing is in part a legacy of slower vaccination in Europe. When German authorities pushed to reopen after last year’s second-quarter quarantine, they implemented a massive state-subsidized rapid testing program so that people who had not yet been able to get vaccinated could prove they were COVID-negative so they could do things like go out to dinner.

After briefly removing the subsidy to encourage vaccination, authorities put the free rapid tests back into circulation when infections began to surge again last fall.