The Biden administration has launched a website for at-home virus checks, which has already become second most visited government website in the US.

The Biden administration’s new website, which allows people to get up to four free at-home coronavirus tests, went live secretly on Tuesday, a day before its official launch, and demand appeared to be high.

According to analytics.usa.gov, which monitors traffic on participating federal websites, more than one million visitors were on the home page and the ordering page of covidtests.gov at one point Tuesday evening — more than 40 times the number of visitors on the government site with the next highest traffic, the U.S. Postal Service’s package-tracking page.

President Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, said at a White House press conference on Tuesday that the site would go live on Wednesday morning, but that it had already started taking orders during a “beta testing phase” conducted by the US Digital Service, the government’s technology support division.

The action demonstrates that the Biden administration is attempting to strengthen its coronavirus response as the highly virulent Omicron variant causes a nationwide outbreak. The government initially opposed sending tests to people’s homes, but has recently solicited the help of the United States Postal Service to manage orders and deliveries.

However, it wasn’t long before the pilot testing showed several obvious flaws.

Some residents of apartment buildings claim they are unable to order testing because other tenants have already made requests for the building. Some people who get their mail at post office boxes have trouble ordering because the site states that orders will only be shipped to legitimate residential addresses.

The Postal Service said in a statement that the issues affected only “a small percentage of orders,” and that people can register a service request or call the Postal Service help desk at 1-800-ASK-USPS (1-800-275-8777) if they have any questions.

Both the Trump and Biden administrations have failed to match testing supply with demand, and Mr. Biden has been criticized for failing to increase the supply of rapid at-home tests soon enough as Americans battled to be tested in the wake of the Omicron variant’s emergence.

Experts say people should use at-home tests in three situations: if they start to show symptoms of Covid-19; if they were exposed to someone who tested positive for the virus five days or more ago; or if they are planning to gather indoors with someone at high risk of Covid-19 and want to make sure they are not infected.

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