MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (WCIV) — The Biden Administration has officially rolled out a website where individuals can order free at-home COVID 19 test kits. There is a limit of four per household.

This comes as test kits are in high demand. It seems as soon as pharmacies get them in, they're swiped off the shelves.

We asked Dr. Kay Durst of Roper St. Francis if she thinks these kits are reliable. "Yes I think they are," she said.

Watch ABC News 4 live at 6 p.m. in the player below or at abcnews4.com/watch.

She believes at-home tests provided by the government are a trusty tool if used correctly.

"Whatever test you get, if it’s one they’re mailing or you’re picking up, read the directions," said Dr. Durst. "They’re all pretty different."

She says if you're having symptoms, test. If you've been exposed and have no symptoms, wait five days before you do.

"I wish we could get more than four per household, because a lot of people have several people," said Dr. Durst.

"Four per household is not a whole lot, let’s be honest," said Cynthia Feldman, founder and CEO of Sweetgrass Pharmacy. "If you have a household of more than four, certainly you need more than that."

She orders at least 300 at a time for her pharmacy and sells out in a day.

"As far as the over-the-counter testing kits, as soon as they became available for us to order they were flying off the shelves," Feldman explained.

As soon as you call Sweetgrass Pharmacy, you'll hear a voicemail saying they're all out of COVID test kits right now.

"We were receiving upward of 200 phone calls a day asking if we had test kits," Feldman said. "It took a huge strain on our staff just to the calls so that’s why we put that out there."

She's hopeful the free government kits will take some of the pressure off pharmacies.

Feldman adds if you're currently having COVID 19 symptoms, you'll need to go to a doctor or buy an at-home test kit from a pharmacy.

The ones provided by the government are not expected to ship for at least seven to 12 days.

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCBD) – Businesses and government organizations have announced closures for Friday due to the possibility of winter weather and frozen precipitation.

SCHOOLS/COLLEGES

All school districts in the Lowcountry: Charleston County School District, Berkeley County School District, Dorchester District 2, Colleton County School District, Georgetown County School District, and Williamsburg County School District will have an e-learning day on Friday. Dorchester District 4 was already learning virtual this week.

Trident Technical College will have a virtual learning day Friday.

The College of Charleston will close at 2:00 p.m.

Charleston Cosmetology Institute will have a half-day Friday and be closed Saturday.

GOVERNMENT

Williamsburg County government offices, only emergency services will be operating.

North Charleston city offices will close Friday at 2:00 p.m.

City of Charleston offices will close at 2:00 p.m. on Friday; all Charleston city parks and recreation facilities and scheduled programs will close at 2:00 p.m. and are expected to reopen Saturday at 12:00 p.m. if conditions allow.

All Charleston County Public Library branches will close Friday at 12:00 p.m. They said all book drops/material returns will stay open.

All Charleston County Parks will close at 2 p.m. on Friday, January 21 and reopen at 11 a.m. on Saturday, January 22. The Campground at James Island County Park will remain open to registered guests.

Charleston County government offices will close Friday at 2:00 p.m.; Convenience Centers will close at 2:00 p.m. on Friday and will remain closed on Saturday, January 22.

Georgetown County offices and facilities will close at noon on Friday. Parks and Recreation facilities will be closed. Recycling centers will reopen at noon Saturday.

Georgetown city offices and city hall will be open from 8:30 a.m. until noon Friday.

Town of Mount Pleasant Administrative Offices will close at 2 p.m. on Friday.

Summerville town offices and facilities will close at 3:00 p.m.

All Georgetown County Library branches will be closed Saturday.

Berkeley County government offices, the courthouse, and all convenience centers will close at 3:00 p.m.

Berkeley Animal Center, Cypress Gardens, and all Berkeley County Library branches will also close early.

Dorchester County Administrative Offices, Dorchester County Circuit, Family and Magistrate Courts, and Dorchester County Libraries will close at 3:00 p.m. on Friday.

All Dorchester County Convenience Sites and county parks will close at 3:00 p.m. Friday and will reopen at noon on Saturday.

Colleton County will close all offices at 1:00 p.m. Friday Convenience Centers will close at 1:00 p.m. Friday and open again at noon on Saturday.

GENERAL CLOSINGS

The Berkeley County Museum and Old Santee Canal Park will both be closed Friday and Saturday.

Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum will be operating under adjusted hours on Friday, January 21 and Saturday, January 22. The museum will close Friday at 2 p.m., with the last ticket sold at 12:30 p.m. The museum will reopen at 10 a.m. on Saturday, an hour later than normal.

Crowfield Golf Club will only be open for lunch on Friday. The golf course and driving range will close at 3:00 p.m. and may open for lunch Saturday at 11:00 a.m.

News 2 will update this list as more closures are announced.

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (WCSC) - The Mount Pleasant Planning Commission is set to vote on a rezoning request that could bring changes to a small neighborhood just off Highway 17.

“Outside the neighborhood, it’s concrete and asphalt. We are surrounded by commercial Mount Pleasant,” says Chad McPeters, who lives in the neighborhood. “This is like a time capsule of Mt. Pleasant 50 years ago. This is one of the last little gems left in Mount Pleasant.”

The small community neighbors call ‘Louise Terrace’ is surrounded by commercial development and high-density apartment buildings. The rezoning request on the Planning Commission’s agenda is to rezone part of the Louise Terrace to a Townhouse District, potentially allowing for townhouses to be right next to and across from houses over half a century old.

While the request does not directly affect McPeters’ house, his concern transcends the rezoning vote at Wednesday’s Planning Commission meeting.

McPeters says his fear is high-density developments changing the character of the neighborhood, potentially bringing in more traffic and fitting new infrastructure in a small neighborhood that neighbors say is already experiencing issues like flooding.

While he is not against development, McPeters says a vote to change the zoning in a small neighborhood is only “putting a foot in the door for bigger, high-density development.”

“Growth is a great thing until it’s unregulated, unsupported and unsustainable, and then it becomes a cancer,” McPeters says.

The decades-old neighborhood is still in the very early stages of seeing any potential for development, in fact, a rezoning request is just the very beginning, which is why several residents plan to attend the Planning Commission meeting.

“You can see right now, there’s no high-density houses here right now,” McPeters says. “There are no giant developments. It’s all single-family houses, and that’s the way we want it to stay. I’d just like to ask them to say no to the rezoning.”

Wednesday’s vote covers only one property in the small neighborhood, but the commission says votes on other properties are “forthcoming.”

Other area residents say they are open to the potential for change, and that rezoning and development are inevitable in a fast-growing city like Mt. Pleasant.

The Mount Pleasant Planning Commission meeting is set for Wednesday at 5 p.m. You can find the full meeting agenda here.

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Getting a driver’s license can be an exciting milestone or a loathsome task depending on the circumstances, but during the COVID-19 pandemic it became one more thing: a potential health threat.

Sitting in a small, enclosed space with someone who is neither a close friend nor a family member is typically what getting a driver’s license requires. And that was a pandemic no-no. So for most of 2020 and 2021, South Carolina did not allow state examiners to ride with license applicants for driving tests.

The result? More business flowed to private driving schools, which in South Carolina are allowed to conduct tests and approve students for a driver’s license.

“It got us very busy,” said Anthony Fralix, an owner and instructor at James Island Driving School. “Since the DMV wasn’t doing testing, it sent a lot of business to us.”

The Department of Motor Vehicles didn’t actually stop testing, but the road tests required for a license were only offered at DMV offices that had on-site driving courses where officials could watch applicants drive through the series of tests from outside the vehicle.

“They were held to the same standards and we had policies in place to address that,” said Kyle McGahee, the DMV’s chief of strategic communications and community affairs. “It was just in a parking lot.”

Previously, license applicants who went to a state facility would be tested with a DMV examiner in the car, usually on public roads following planned routes.

When concerns about the virus prompted a change in policy — no DMV examiners in cars with applicants — license testing was limited to roughly half the DMV’s 66 locations that had “testing pads” with driving courses on site and by appointment only.

“We did have a lot of questions and some people said they were having trouble finding appointments near them,” said Cindy Hutto, the agency’s driver’s licenses standards manager. “Even though it was in half the number of sites, the staffing was moved and we were running road tests throughout the day.”

In-car testing at DMV offices was halted from May 2020 to June 1, 2021, then halted again from September to mid-November 2021 after the delta variant caused a surge in COVID cases nationwide. In-car testing has since resumed and appointments are no longer required.

At Rusty’s Driving School in Mount Pleasant, owner Rusty Hires said he briefly shut down his business in 2020 for only the third time in 35 years — the other two being Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and the 2018 winter storm that closed roads and Charleston International Airport.

After about a month, Hires reopened for business with COVID-19 restrictions in place.

“We reduced our class sizes and mandated masks,” Hires. said “Very few of our clients objected.”

Rusty’s Driving School continued to do in-car license testing, and Hires said they picked up lots of business.

“Even before the pandemic we had driver training schools that were testing drivers,” said Hutto. “From the kid’s perspective, they might be more comfortable testing with the people who trained them.”

Detailed statistics on the number of road tests conducted by private businesses were unavailable from the state, partly because of a change in the way they are reported. Regardless of who conducts the test, the DMV issues the license.

In the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 the DMV issued, respectively, 39,467 and 38,933 regular (non-commercial) licenses that would have required driving tests. In 2019, the last full year before the pandemic, 36,514 were issued.

At least in the greater Charleston area, where population growth has been driven by people moving from other states, it’s not just teens seeking licenses.

“You’ve got a lot of people who moved here, like from New York, and had never learned to drive,” Fralix said. Those drivers, he said, are about half his clients.

Hires said a sizeable portion of the business is older residents who moved to the area.

“Some have a license and just want a little improvement, and some never drove because they could walk out their door and jump on a train or a bus,” he said.

The omicron variant has sent COVID-19 cases soaring once again, but this time the DMV has announced no restrictions on in-car driver’s license testing.

However, some offices are offering limited services due to staffing issues.

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (WCBD) – The plan to send free, at-home COVID-19 tests through the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) launched on the web Tuesday.- While many have already claimed their free tests, some people are running into issues trying to claim theirs.

Getting your free at-home COVID-19 tests is not as easy as expected. An error message stating “At-home COVID-19 tests have already been ordered for this address” has left many looking to obtain their free tests confused.

AN ERROR MESSAGE (PICTURE OF ERROR MESSAGE)

Arlene Clark, who plans to claim her free tests soon, says she’d like to have the at-home tests just in case.

“I don’t feel like it’s important for me to have it now,” Clark said. “I don’t run to get tested. I think if I ever had the symptoms of COVID, I’d like it, you know, to be convenient.”

She hasn’t run into issues obtaining her test yet, but she says she’s heard about the problem and thinks it’s because the program is so new.

“I think it’s too soon,” she said. “I don’t know anyone that’s gotten it yet. The only one I know that has even sent for it is my brother in New York. So, I just think it’s going to take a while for people to start thinking about getting it.”

Officials say the program is limited to four tests per residential address, meaning those living in apartments, duplexes and other multi-unit homes may run into problems.

USPS says if you come across the error message, you should make sure someone in your household didn’t already claim your tests.

If no one has, USPS encourages you to file a service request on their website, or get tested at a nearby testing site.

Clark says she’s just happy that the option to claim four free at-home COVID tests is available.

“So, I would probably get it and hold onto it until I think I need it,” she said.

White house officials say it will be several weeks before the free tests are shipped to homes.