A coronavirus
testing project by Google has been thrown into confusion over comments made by
US President Donald Trump.
He said the
company was developing a website for all Americans to check whether they should
get tested.
However,
Google's sister company Verily had actually been working on a pilot limited to
California's Bay Area.
Two sites
launch on Monday - but only the localised one contains screening features for
tests.
The Verily site was "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", the company said in a statement.
"We will
take the time to assess operations at pilot sites in the Bay Area before
rolling out to additional sites."
The website,
Project Baseline, launched today but appears to already have run out of
appointments for testing.
The other
site is being built by Google itself.
On Friday,
the President Trump promised a nationwide website that would be at the core of
the government's screening process and claimed 1,700 Google engineers had made
"tremendous progress".
"Google
is helping to develop a website," he said.
"It's
going to be very quickly done - unlike websites of the past - to determine
whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient
location."
On Sunday, Google chief executive Sundar
Pichai confirmed a website dedicated to "education,
prevention, and local resources nationwide" would be rolled out on Monday,
in partnership with the US government.
But the separate Verily website remained in the early stages of its pilot,
limited to California's Bay Area, although the plan was to expand to other
locations over time.
"In this
unprecedented moment, we feel a great responsibility to help," Mr Pichai
said.
"We'll
keep doing everything we can to deliver on our mission and help people take
care of themselves and their communities."
As well as
these two websites, Google has been promoting health information on its
homepage and YouTube, as well as updating Google Search and Maps regularly with
any business or school closures.
Last week executives from Amazon, Google,
Microsoft, Apple and Facebook met officials
at Downing Street to
discuss their role in the coronavirus crisis.
Google has
also launched a feature for UK users searching for different health conditions
and symptoms that prioritises NHS information above other search results in an
effort to combat misinformation.
Tags
Tech