WQYU.COM

What’s inside the COVID-19 home test kit and why different expiration dates?

Doing a little spring add _^ ^winter cleaning and between last year and toward the beginning of this year (2022) we had requested to receive the COVID-19 home test kit unfortunately today when I look at the expiration date it says that it has expired however I wasn’t just gonna throw them away I had to open them up to see what’s inside them and as I started to look at each item that was included in the COVID-19 home test kit I noticed that they each have a different expiration date except for one we’re in the instructions it tells you to refer to the outer box for the expiration date.

If you have requested the COVID-19 home test kit that was made available through the United States Postal Service USPS for short he probably would’ve received something that looks like this in the picture below although yours may be slightly different or it may be the exact same type.

Looking at the same box on the backside near the QR code you’ll see something that says “use by (17) YYYY-MM-DD (Year month and date)”. I don’t know what the (17) is but they appear to all have them at least what I have.

When I open the COVID-19 home test kit you see a instructional manual/directions, one COVID-19 test card in a pouch, one test tube and one swab, this is according to the instructional manual/directions as seen in the photo below and you also can see the items that comes with the COVID-19 home test kit.

Upon carefully looking at each item I noticed that each of the items with the exception of one item have different expiration dates, starting with the card in a pouch there does not seem to be any expiration date, the test tube does have an expiration date, the swab also has an expiration date, so why dos the box have one date but the others are at least one to two years off?

The protective packaging for the test card.

A test tube

The test card indicating whether or not you test positive for COVID-19 or negative for COVID-19.

Front and back of the test swab.

In the photo below, I decided to take apart the test strip to see what is inside it is basically a plastic casing that protects some type of strip that changes color depending on if you test positive for COVID-19 or negative.