Finding a COVID test, a click away

Eli Coustan is a mild-mannered high school freshman by day, and a lifesaving hero in the evening.

The computer savvy Jewish Evanstonian created two websites to help people cope with COVID-19: His first helped people find places to get vaccinated earlier on in the pandemic. His new one helps people find at-home COVID tests.

With the straightforward name findacovidtest.org, Coustan’s site hit a peak of 24,000 hits on one mid-January day. Now, it takes four days to get 20,000 hits at the site, thanks to a more widespread availability of test kits.

The site searches for tests at the websites of a dozen major merchants-from drugstores to general retailers-to see what tests they have in stock and how much they cost. Website users can filter their results based on retailers or prices.

Findcovidtest.org, said Coustan, is for at home kits that you would order online, not for PCR tests.

His motivations for creating the websites were born out of a desire to help his family-first find vaccination sites, and then test kits.

“Seeing how hard it was for my grandparents to get a vaccination led me to build the first site,” he said. That site ultimately received 400,000 hits. It now forwards its visitors to a government-based site.

More recently, Coustan wanted his family to access test kits so they could visit other family members. He knew so many other families were facing the same predicament, so he took action to help. “I’m glad to be able to use my coding skills to make a difference in this difficult time,” he said.

In the future, Coustan looks forward to continuing to use his passion for computers-for good. He plans to study computer science and engineering in college. “I hope to [keep] helping people, to make a difference.”

For more information, visit findacovidtest.org.