Dr. Marc Siegel: COVID and your privacy – freedom from pandemic mustn't mean a loss of our essential liberties

Simple home tests to help you identify COVID along with serological tests to show immunity and proof of vaccine will all help us manage our exit from the pandemic and back in the direction of normal life.

Unfortunately, despite the promise of Ellume and Lucira, and other home testing, no home test kit has become readily available on a large scale and in fact there has been a big backlog of do-it-yourself tests waiting approval at the Food and Drug Administration. Given the risks, you must be allowed to give your consent to be tested by Amazon or any company. Which is why I was glad to see that last week the FDA issued an Emergency Use Authorization for Amazon’s home self-testing PCR nasal swab kit produced by its own lab STS Holdco. This will initially be used for twice-a-week screening of Amazon’s own 1.3 million employees, overseen by medical staff, but could have a much broader application, especially if Amazon decides to offer it online for general usage.