FTC warned Scammers are offering Fake Home Covid-19 Tests

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Various reports have indicated that scammers are trying to cash by taking advantage of unsuspecting consumers with home Covid-19 tests at the top of Americans’ shopping lists as the Omicron variant continues to spread. The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) warned earlier this month that online criminals are posing as legitimate sellers of over-the-counter Covid-19 testing kits. The FTC said, “Unauthorized at-home testing kits are popping up online as opportunistic scammers take advantage of the spike in demand”. However, scams can take different forms. Some fraudsters pretending to be genuine merchants are hawking unauthorized rapid tests, while others have no merchandise on hand and just want to take your money and run. A senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, Gigi Gronvall issued a statement.

Gronvall said, “It’s definitely happening and it’s really challenging, depending on the sophistication of the scam, for the consumer to discern this”. Senators Ed Markey and Richard Blumenthal are calling on the FTC to investigate reports of price gouging and other illegal practices surrounding the sale of over-the-counter at-home Covid-19 test kits. The legislators forwarded a letter to FTC Chair Lina Khan and said the surge in demand for at-home virus tests makes the current environment ideal for predatory and profiteering behavior, including the sale of fraudulent test kits or charging exorbitant prices for those that are available. Point to be noted that federal regulators have authorized only 13 home antigen tests on an emergency basis.

The FDA has also authorized 3 molecular tests, known as PCR tests, and widely considered the gold standard of Covid-19 detection. It can be purchased without a prescription and administered by a layperson at home. You can check the name of the test for sale against the FDA’s list of authorized kits. One reason for the strain on supply is that relatively few tests are FDA-authorized. Others got the green light but later had their authorizations revoked, making it harder for consumers to identify the most reliable tests. A professor of biomedical diagnostics at Arizona State University, Mara Aspinall said, “I’ve heard of a seemingly real company approaching a state with tests without a current Emergency Use Authorization. It might have had European approval, or it was given EUA, and then it was revoked”.