Ahead of the holiday season, the Maryland Department of Health will be giving away 500,000 at-home rapid antigen COVID-19 tests through local health departments.

Gov. Larry Hogan announced the new program on Wednesday, as thousands across the region prepare to travel through airports and gather mask-less around the Thanksgiving table.

“By making these at-home test kits available through local health departments, we are giving Marylanders more options and more peace of mind as we head into the holiday season,” Hogan says in a press release. “Of course, the single most important thing you can do, if you haven’t already, is get vaccinated or get your booster shot.”

A comprehensive list of pick-up locations wasn’t immediately available. Starting Wednesday, Dec. 1, Prince George’s County libraries will be providing the free testing kits at all county branches. Roughly 1,700 kits will be allocated to the library system per week, so tests will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis.

Hogan also announced that the self-tests will be available at federally qualified health centers in the county.

It’s still unclear what locations in Montgomery County will offer the tests, but DCist/WAMU has asked the Maryland Health Department to provide a list.

Virginia has also launched a similar program, stocking libraries across the commonwealth with free at-home test kits. Starting  Dec. 3, Fairfax County will be providing the kits at 21 public library locations. Alexandria libraries began handing out tests last month. 

The free test kits, made by Abbot BinaxNOW, are normally both expensive and hard to come by. A pack of two goes for around $24 at Walgreens and CVS pharmacies — if someone can manage to find a store that has them in stock. While public health officials have propped up regular COVID-19 testing as a way out of the pandemic, affordable and quick COVID-19 tests haven’t been made readily available. (Unlike in some European countries, where residents can get a rapid test delivered to their home.) Most local health departments in the D.C. region offer free PCR tests — some that can be taken at home — but results still need to be processed in a lab, which can take anywhere from two to five days.

The BinaxNOW kits will contain two tests, which should be used between 36  and 72 hours of one another. Results appear within 15 minutes after administration. Unlike PCR tests, which are designed to flag any amount of the coronavirus, the rapid antigen tests are designed to flag whether someone is infectious. That means there needs to be enough virus present in a person for an antigen test to come back positive — a drawback for flagging early or asymptomatic infection. However, in symptomatic cases, or when there is a lot of virus present in someone’s body, rapid antigen tests have shown to be very accurate.

The expansion of testing comes as case rates tick up in Maryland. According to the Washington Post’s regional coronavirus tracker, the seven-day average of new cases in Maryland increased by 13% in the past week. 

This story has been updated with information on Prince George’s County’s test distribution, and the availability of at-home tests in Virginia.