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Trump’s Touted Coronavirus Website Still in Development Stage

A coronavirus testing website praised by U.S. President Donald Trump is still in its early stages of development and will launch initially in the San Francisco Bay Area, starting Monday. The site, which Trump mentioned during a Friday press briefing, is designed to help individuals assess whether they need testing for COVID-19 and then direct them to nearby testing locations, including drive-through centers in Walmart and Target parking lots. The President claimed that Google had deployed approximately 1,700 engineers to work on the project.

However, the website is not exactly as described by Trump. It is a virus triage tool being developed by Verily, Alphabet Inc.’s health-care arm, as part of its Project Baseline initiative. Verily confirmed the tool would be integrated into the existing Project Baseline website, which already provides health-related services. A spokesperson for Verily stated that the plan is to have the tool available by Monday, though she did not confirm the involvement of 1,700 engineers from Alphabet or Google.

The announcement of the website was one of several actions Trump took during his press conference, where he declared a national emergency in response to the pandemic, waived student loan interest payments, and announced plans for the government to purchase large quantities of oil to stabilize prices. Business leaders from major companies, such as Walmart Inc. and CVS Health Corp., joined the president for the briefing, but no representatives from Google were present.

In a separate update, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai informed employees that the company was working on a collaboration between Verily and Google to assist with coronavirus testing. Pichai shared an internal memo explaining that as more testing kits become available, efforts would be made to direct at-risk individuals to local testing sites via the Baseline website, following guidance from health authorities.

Project Baseline, which aims to gather genetic and molecular data to create a detailed map of human health, was launched in 2014 as one of Google’s ambitious “moonshot” projects. The initiative is led by Andy Conrad, a PhD genetics expert known for his unorthodox style, including wearing flip-flops at work.

Despite the early stage of the website’s development, Verily has expressed its commitment to building the tool to help triage individuals for COVID-19 testing, beginning with Northern California.

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