President Donald Trump appears to have misspoken, and perhaps even significantly exaggerated, the details of a Google project to screen Americans for coronavirus.
Hours after Trump said Friday that Google is working to build a website to help screen Americans who may have COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, Google sent out a tweet describing something very different.
The site is actually being built by Verily, a subsidiary of Alphabet - Google's parent company - and the website is being designed for people seeking testing in the San Francisco Bay Area, instead of nationwide as Trump claimed.
"We are developing a tool to help triage individuals for Covid-19 testing," a Verily spokesperson said in a tweet. "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. We appreciate the support of government officials and industry partners and thank the Google engineers who have volunteered to be part of this effort."
Carolyn Wang, communications lead for Verily, told The Verge that originally, this website was only going to be made available to health care workers instead of the general public, but now anyone will be able to visit it since it has been announced. Still, the web site can only direct people to testing facilities in the Bay Area. It plans to expand over time.
The contradictory information about the Google project comes as the Trump administration has faced fierce criticism for its handling of the outbreak. Shortages of test kits have made it difficult to assess the scale of the outbreak in the US and hampered efforts to contain it.
Earlier on Friday, Trump declared a national emergency because of coronavirus, which has infected over 1,200 people in the U.S. and killed 33. Worldwide, it has killed over 140,000 people and killed over 5,000.
Business Insider has reached out to Google for more clarification and to the White House for comment.
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Statement from Verily: "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.
- Google Communications (@Google_Comms) March 13, 2020