Some Vegas residents can now get a coronavirus testing kit shipped to their homes via drone

Want to test yourself to see if you have COVID-19? If you live in a very specific area of Las Vegas, Nevada, you may be able to get a coronavirus testing kit shipped to your home — via a drone, no less.

Drone delivery company DroneUp on Tuesday announced a pilot project in partnership with Walmart and medical testing company Quest Diagnostics, where it will delivery COVID-19 at-home self-collection kits to single-family homes in the North Las Vegas-area.

DroneUp has already been wading into coronavirus-related drone deliveries. Earlier this year, the Virginia-based company partnered with UPS’s drone delivery arm, UPS Flight Forward, to test how drones can deliver critical supplies to communities, be it water, food, toilet paper, and medicine.

To be eligible to get a coronavirus testing kit shipped to your house, you need to live in a single-family home located within a 1-mile radius of the North Las Vegas Walmart, located at 1807 West Craig Road — which is where the drones will be launched. Plus, it comes at no cost.

You can request your drone delivery appointment through GetDroneTest.com. From there, it’s just first-come, first-serve. Kits will be available “while supplies last” every day between 8:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., weather and visibility permitting.

Then, the drone is on its way. Kits will be dropped on the driveway, front sidewalk, or backyard depending on where there are cars and trees. And to ensure your kit isn’t taken by someone else, you’ll receive a text message from DroneUp when the drone is on its way. Quest said it can take as little as five minutes for a drone to arrive, though the company added that deliveries may be delayed “if we are experiencing a high volume of orders.”

Once delivered, you’ll receive a self-collection kit, where you’ll conducted your own self-administered nasal swab via a device for anterior nares (nasal) swab collection (it’s the same kit Quest recently made available through its QuestDirect Active Infection Test).

From there, you’ll have to ship your sample via old-fashioned snail mail to a Quest Diagnostics lab for processing, and you’ll receive your results online. Alas, no drone will be able to pick it up for you.