Google is working with the US government to develop a COVID-19 screening website

[Matrix]

 

 

In brief: US President Donald Trump today announced that search giant Google is in the process of creating a website focused on the COVID-19 virus outbreak. The website will act as a form of pre-testing triage and will help to give US citizens some much-needed direction in this challenging time.

The site will help citizens screen themselves for the virus by answering a series of questions intended to narrow down symptoms. If the person is likely to have the virus based on their responses, the site will direct them to the nearest mobile test location for COVID-19, which will reportedly be set up in locations like store parking lots.

 

Results won't be given to visitors on the spot, of course -- samples will need to be sent back to a lab for testing. However, once the test results are in, they'll be displayed on the original screening website so that users can stay informed and more easily decide their next steps.

 

 

According to the President, roughly 1,700 Google employees are developing the website right now. Trump has been known to exaggerate from time to time, but given the high-profile nature of this virus, we wouldn't be surprised if that figure is accurate. In all likelihood, tens of thousands (if not millions) of Americans will visit this website over the coming months, so it's in Google's best interest to ensure it's bug-free and capable of handling high levels of web traffic.

 

Other details about the website and the partnership between Google and the US government are still scarce at the moment. However, we can probably expect to learn more (and perhaps even see the site launch) over the coming days.

 

Source

[steven36]

7 hours ago, Mach1 said:

Trump has been known to exaggerate from time to time, but given the high-profile nature of this virus, we wouldn't be surprised if that figure is accurate. In all likelihood,

1st Google  heard of it ,   it seems Trump  was making it all up  .

 

Apparently, though, this was all news to the search engine giant too. Probably because the president managed to get nearly every detail about the initiative wrong.

 

The announcement baffled Google higher-ups, a source from within the company told WIRED. While another company under the Alphabet corporate umbrella, the health-focused Verily, is currently building a triage tool to direct people to Covid-19 testing (the disease caused by the virus), at this point it’s nowhere near the scale the president described.

 

Shortly after Trump’s announcement, Google’s communications and public affairs team posted a statement from Verily on Twitter going into more detail:

 

“We are developing a tool to help triage individuals for Covid-19 testing. Verily is in the early stages of development, and planning to roll testing out in the Bay Area, with the hope of expanding more broadly over time.”

 

So in short: It’s not nationwide, it’s not made by Google, and, until Trump dropped the ball, it apparently wasn’t even going to be publically available. The head of communications at Verily, Carolyn Wang, told the Verge that this trial website was originally being engineered exclusively for health care workers.

 

Thanks to the president’s flub, it’ll now be open for everyone to visit at launch. At the moment, though, it can only direct people exhibiting Covid-19 symptoms to “pilot sites” within the Bay area. Wang told the Verge they hope to roll out the tool beyond California “over time.”

 

Which all sounds significantly different from what White House staff described. Though admittedly, the concept did sound farfetched considering how bureaucratic hurdles and other delays have the U.S. lagging far behind other countries when it comes to providing test kits and making testing easily available. The Covid Tracking Project has confirmed 16,521 total tests nationwide as of Thursday. South Korea currently eclipses that total in about two days.

 

As for that 1,700 number, it was mentioned in a companywide call for volunteers that Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai sent out Thursday. As first reported by CNBC, Pichai issued a memo that mentioned how “a planning effort is underway” for Verily to “aid in the COVID-19 effort in the U.S,” which might be where Trump got the idea in the first place sans any reading comprehension skills.

 

When Verily’s website—the actual one, not whatever the president was talking about—goes live, it’ll be available at Project Baseline, the company’s tool for connecting users with clinical research studies. Within the U.S. to date, there have been more than 2,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 across 47 states and D.C., with around 41 reported deaths.

 

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