Need a fresh supply of good masks or COVID-19 at-home tests? Here’s where to get them

The recent arrival of COVID-19’s omi­cron vari­ant served as an excel­lent reminder that the nov­el coro­n­avirus is a wily pathogen that is quite capa­ble of mutat­ing and frus­trat­ing our efforts to bring one of his­to­ry’s worst pan­demics under control.

With com­mu­ni­ty spread up and the risk of infec­tion grow­ing, now is a good time to stock up on essen­tial pro­tec­tive sup­plies as well as review­ing safe­ty pro­to­cols and recon­sid­er­ing trav­el and gath­er­ing plans. (And, of course, if you haven’t got­ten a third vac­cine dose, make an appoint­ment now to get that done!)

If you do decide to spend time indoors with peo­ple you don’t live with, it will be eas­i­er to make an effort to min­i­mize your risk if you have a good set of masks on hand, as well as a stash of at-home COVID-19 tests.

Hap­pi­ly, you can avoid the risk of coun­ter­feit goods and sup­port small busi­ness­es right here in the Unit­ed States if you know where to go. Below are some options for pick­ing up masks, tests, and oth­er PPE if you’d like to be pre­pared for the next drea­ry phase of the pan­dem­ic, which is like­ly to last a few more weeks at least.

What masks should I get?

Espe­cial­ly with omi­cron rag­ing, it’s a good idea to have a stock of KN95 and N95 masks on hand to use as your default face cov­er­ing. While cloth masks are cer­tain­ly bet­ter than no mask, KN95s and N95s pro­vide more pro­tec­tion, as Stan­ford infec­tious dis­eases doc­tor Abraar Karan explained to New York Mag­a­zine’s Chas Dan­ner in an inter­view that was pub­lished today.

Why should peo­ple start using high-fil­tra­tion masks like N95s and KN95s as their go-to, every­day masks rather than cloth ones?
The key rea­son is that trans­mis­sion of the coro­n­avirus is pri­mar­i­ly through aerosols, which float around in the air — you inhale them — and are not fil­tered well by cloth masks. You real­ly need melt-blown polypropy­lene, which you find in sur­gi­cal masks and N95s, to stop these small particles.

So the mate­ri­als used to make these masks make them bet­ter equipped to fil­ter out the virus?
Yeah. The mate­r­i­al is basi­cal­ly melt-blown poly­mers, like polypropy­lene, which form this com­plex sort of web­bing which is then elec­tro­sta­t­i­cal­ly charged, and that pulls the par­ti­cles in when you’re inhal­ing and exhal­ing. Cloth masks are often just woven thread and oth­er mate­ri­als that don’t have that design. Cloth masks don’t pro­vide great source con­trol, either. The CDC is now let­ting peo­ple who test pos­i­tive for COVID-19 stop iso­lat­ing after five days and then wear a mask for five days. It would have been ide­al for them to also rec­om­mend that be a bet­ter mask.

How many should you get? Prob­a­bly at least one for every day of the week. Dr. Karan told Dan­ner that N95s and KN95s can be reused.

How often can you reuse them? Does the elec­tro­sta­t­ic charge that attracts the par­ti­cles wear off?
Peter Tsai, the sci­en­tist who invent­ed the mate­r­i­al used in N95s, has said that you could reuse them for a while and rec­om­mend­ed buy­ing sev­en masks and using a dif­fer­ent one each day while let­ting the oth­ers sit out. Exact­ly how long the charge lasts, I think, real­ly depends on the envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions — humid­i­ty and sweat and things like that. But it’s up to the gov­ern­ment to fig­ure out how long an aver­age per­son could use it. I think these are things that the CDC real­ly should have been look­ing into.

They’ve had a year and a half now. It’s crazy.

How has Omi­cron, which is clear­ly the most trans­mis­si­ble vari­ant yet, changed your per­son­al approach to man­ag­ing your COVID risk, includ­ing when you decide to mask up out­side of the hospital?
The trans­mis­si­bil­i­ty issue is a huge one, and masks are com­plete­ly tied to that. The chances of catch­ing COVID in tran­sient or fleet­ing inter­ac­tions, like being in the gro­cery store for a few min­utes or being face-to-face with some­body for a con­ver­sa­tion — I think It’s far more like­ly that I could get trans­mis­sion now with this vari­ant than with any oth­ers in the past. It changes my risk calculus.

The full inter­view is here if you’d like to read it.

Sad­ly, fakes are every­where… the CDC advis­es that a whop­ping 60% or so of KN95 res­pi­ra­tors in the Unit­ed States are coun­ter­feit (fake) and do not meet NIOSH (Nation­al Insti­tute for Occu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health) requirements.

What tests should I get?

For test­ing pur­pos­es, you want a viral test, as opposed to an anti­body test.

Here’s the CDC’s primer on viral tests:

A viral test tells you if you are infect­ed with SARS-CoV­‑2, the virus that caus­es COVID-19. There are two types of viral tests: rapid tests and lab­o­ra­to­ry tests. Viral tests use sam­ples that come from your nose or mouth. Rapid tests can be per­formed in min­utes and can include anti­gen and some NAATs. Lab­o­ra­to­ry tests can take days to com­plete and include RT-PCR and oth­er types of NAATs.

Some test results may need con­fir­ma­to­ry testing.

Self-tests are rapid tests that can be tak­en at home or any­where, are easy to use, and pro­duce rapid results. COVID-19 self-tests are one of many risk-reduc­tion mea­sures, along with vac­ci­na­tion, mask­ing, and phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing, that pro­tect you and oth­ers by reduc­ing the chances of spread­ing COVID-19.

Hav­ing a sup­ply of rapid self-tests at home will enable you to test your­self before you head out the door to a din­ner par­ty or movie the­ater or oth­er gathering.

Most rapid self-tests are of the “anti­gen” vari­ety, and sev­er­al com­pa­nies make them, though they are get­ting hard­er to find because the Unit­ed States has­n’t done a good job of ensur­ing tests are uni­ver­sal­ly acces­si­ble to all.

But if you know where to go online, you can put in an order and have tests at your home in a few days. No need to dri­ve from store to store.

Note that anti­gen tests are not your only option for test­ing at home.

There are a cou­ple of rapid self-test­ing sys­tems now on the mar­ket of the mol­e­c­u­lar type, which are more accu­rate than the anti­gen type.

One is made by Cue Health and anoth­er is made by a start­up called Detect.

Cue’s sys­tem isn’t cheap. It’s $474 for a read­er and three tests (the read­er and tests are each over $200 each). Detec­t’s tests, on the oth­er hand, go for $50 each and require a read­er (called a hub) that costs just $39. As of press time, Cue had inven­to­ry for sale, while Detect did not. (You can sign up on Detec­t’s web­site to be noti­fied when addi­tion­al units are made avail­able for pur­chase.)

If you can afford a Cue or Detect sys­tem, hav­ing one handy will give you a means of per­form­ing con­fir­ma­to­ry test­ing with­out hav­ing to go anywhere.

Mol­e­c­u­lar at home tests aren’t cheap, so it’s log­i­cal to save them for use in fol­low­ing up on a pos­i­tive anti­gen test or test­ing again for COVID-19 if you have symp­toms but got a neg­a­tive result from an anti­gen test.

Now, here’s where you can stock up on masks and anti­gen tests.

These are all non-Ama­zon and non-eBay rec­om­men­da­tions. Our advice is to buy straight from the man­u­fac­tur­er or autho­rized dis­trib­u­tor, as it’ll ensure you’re not wast­ing your mon­ey and will get prod­ucts that are gen­uine, mean­ing NIOSH or FDA approved. These firms all have their own store­fronts, many pow­ered by Shopi­fy, that make check­ing out straight­for­ward and rel­a­tive­ly pain­less. Many have pro­mo­tion­al dis­counts avail­able. Check Retail­MeNot and Hon­ey before com­plet­ing your pur­chase to see if there’s a dis­count avail­able to you.

DemeTech

Brief com­pa­ny overview:

Deme­TECH is known for its inno­v­a­tive wound clo­sure med­ical devices such as sur­gi­cal sutures and her­nia mesh, Deme­TECH ramped up pro­duc­tion of Amer­i­can-made sur­gi­cal masks and expand­ed to pro­duce N95 res­pi­ra­tors when the COVID-19 cri­sis first struck.

Called DemeMASK, the col­lec­tion uti­lizes only the high­est grade Amer­i­can-made raw materials.

In fact, all aspects of the oper­a­tion are USA-based, from the fab­ric to the pack­ag­ing and extend­ing to the machin­ery used in the fac­to­ry. This domes­tic pro­duc­tion reduces depen­den­cy on obtain­ing PPE from for­eign coun­tries and com­pa­nies, which was a big issue when the virus first spread in the Unit­ed States and PPE were near­ly impos­si­ble for med­ical staff and con­sumers to find.

Their online store is here.

They sell both masks and COVID-19 anti­gen tests.

Last Feb­ru­ary, The New York Times pro­filed Deme­Tech for an arti­cle that dis­cussed the para­dox of small, U.S. based firms strug­gling to find buy­ers despite a huge demand for qual­i­ty masks. Buy­ing direct­ly from a man­u­fac­tur­er like Deme­Tech is a win-win: you’ll get good masks and help them stay in business.

Wellbefore

Brief com­pa­ny overview:

We woke up one day and real­ized that enough was enough. We had to do some­thing about the price goug­ing and qual­i­ty of the prod­ucts, espe­cial­ly for our first respon­ders, essen­tial work­ers and you, our cus­tomer. Our fam­i­ly pulled in all our resources, con­nec­tions and decades worth of expe­ri­ence in over­seas man­u­fac­tur­ing to bring more PPE to the mar­ket at the com­pet­i­tive prices with low min­i­mum order quan­ti­ties for all cus­tomers around the world.

Our promise to our cus­tomers is that we will always be hon­est and trans­par­ent with what we’re sell­ing, where it’s made, what cer­ti­fi­ca­tions we have and if it’s the right prod­uct for them.

We are not moti­vat­ed by greed, we are moti­vat­ed by sav­ing lives.

We care about you.

Their online store is here.

They sell both masks and COVID-19 anti­gen tests along with oth­er PPE.

Bona Fide Masks

Brief com­pa­ny overview:

In 1938, our great-grand­fa­ther and grand­fa­ther start­ed Ball Chain Mfg. Co., Inc. in the garage behind their house in the Bronx, New York. We have a his­to­ry of help­ing our in times of need.

In World War II, our new­ly-formed com­pa­ny man­u­fac­tured parts for the Thun­der­bolt fight­er plane.

In 2020, at the request of a local com­mu­ni­ty leader, we formed Bona Fide Masks® to help address the short­age of PPE.

As 4th gen­er­a­tion fam­i­ly owned and oper­at­ed busi­ness, our mis­sion is to bring authen­tic masks to every­one! We are a trust­ed U.S. mil­i­tary man­u­fac­tur­er that cares so much about our cus­tomers. We are proud that Bona Fide Masks™ is now the EXCLUSIVE dis­trib­u­tor of  Powe­com ® prod­ucts in the U.S. and Canada.

Their online store is here.

They sell masks and oth­er PPE, but not COVID-19 tests.

iHealth

Brief com­pa­ny overview:

Our goal is to make it as easy as pos­si­ble for indi­vid­u­als of all ages to take a more active role in man­ag­ing their health. We do this by design­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing inno­v­a­tive, con­sumer-friend­ly, mobile per­son­al health­care prod­ucts that con­nect to the cloud.

iHealth prod­ucts are easy to use, mak­ing it sim­ple for con­sumers to accu­rate­ly mea­sure, track, and share a full range of health vitals.

By auto­mat­i­cal­ly con­nect­ing the data through the cloud, con­sumers are able to see a more com­pre­hen­sive view of their vitals and eas­i­ly share infor­ma­tion with health­care pro­fes­sion­als or loved ones.

Their online store is here. They only sell tests, as they’re a manufacturer.

Stay safe and be well this New Year!