The US government’s site to claim free COVID testing, which started accepting orders a day earlier, is pulling a lot of visitors — more than any other government page combined, according to the government’s own analysis site.
Web traffic numbers change by the second, but at 1:32 PM ET, when I ran the report to download real-time numbers for all government pages, COVIDTests.gov (along with the FAQ page and versions of the site in other languages) had 685,817 visitors. Visitor numbers for the other 3,853 pages included in the report came in at 419,615. Traffic does not appear to have decreased since then.
Since the announcement, there have been concerns that the site would not be able to handle the load. So far, though, it seems to be able to handle the crowds – although it’s always possible we could see an even bigger wave of visitors to the site tomorrow, the date the general public was told it was going live.
That is not to say that things have gone perfectly. Multiple people have reported that living in an apartment building can cause problems, with some residents getting an error message that tests have already been ordered for their address. if the Associated Press reports, it’s hard to say how widespread the problem is, and there are conflicting reports on how to fix the problem.
The government has pledged to send out 500 million tests, with a limit of four per household. If you’d like to order yours, read our guide on how to do it here.