White House, USPS finalizing plans to begin shipping coronavirus test kits to U.S. households

Test manufacturers and distributors seeking to provide a share of the 500 million tests have submitted proposals to the government, and the Biden administration on Thursday evening awarded its first contract toward the purchase, said a person with knowledge of the testing plan. A formal announcement on the effort could come as soon as next week.

The Postal Service is negotiating with its four labor unions to extend the seasonal workforce — the roughly 40,000 people brought in each year to help the agency work through a glut of holiday packages. The agency moved 13.2 billion pieces of mail and parcels between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve. ...