High prices for at-home COVID-19 tests are hitting the wallets of U.S. families who need them to get back to school and work — if they can find any to buy at all.

One restaurant worker in New York said she paid an acquaintance double the retail price in a sidewalk exchange for a test kit. A mom in Missouri said she's rationing her last two-pack for if her kids show serious symptoms. Another parent is keeping her daughter home from school, where tests are required before returning after the holiday, until an in-person appointment later this week because the $80 price tag she saw in online community groups was too steep.

Digital marketplaces list BinaxNOW kits — which include two tests — for as high as $75, around three times what they cost at many large retailers. In a December statement warning against price gouging, New York Attorney General Letitia James said two-packs that are usually priced between $14 and $25 were going for up to $70 a package.

“The danger in health care is that for any life-saving product — it's vulnerable to price gouging” because most people would pay anything to save the life of a loved one, epidemiologist and health economist Eric Feigl-Ding said in a string of tweets about high prices for at-home tests.

This desperation comes as COVID-19 cases hit record highs in the U.S., contributing to long lines at testing sites and skyrocketing demand for at-home kits. The U.S. has largely left it up to the private market to produce and sell the tests, which are not in abundance.

While updated recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention do not call for people to obtain a negative test before returning to their jobs after contracting the virus, some employers are requiring that step of their workers anyway, adding to demand. At the same time, parents say they are aiming to have tests on hand because they worry about their kids catching the virus at school.

The relative scarcity of tests in the U.S. stands in stark contrast to the situation in some European countries, where they are free and easy to find.

For its part, Abbott Laboratories, which makes the BinaxNOW kits, said in an email statement it is making 70 million tests per month, with plans to surpass that. The company says it has not raised the price of its test since it launched, though prices at retailers may have risen, like in the now-lapsed Walmart and Kroger deal.

By Tribune News Service