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Google: COVID-19 triage website is in early stages of development

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President Donald Trump declares a national state of emergency about the coronavirus pandemic in a press conference on Friday. 41 people in the U.S. have died from the COVID-19 as of Friday, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

President Donald Trump declared a national state of emergency due to the coronavirus on Friday, freeing up $50 billion in emergency funds to respond to the pandemic. The news came just a day after the American Hospital Association, American Medical Association and American Nurses Association wrote letters to Vice President Mike Pence, urging that Trump declare a national emergency.

“I am officially declaring a national emergency. Two very big words,” he said at a White House press conference.

Flanked by the CEOs of Target, Walmart, CVS Health, and other retailers, Trump announced Google would be building a website that would triage people and route them to nearby drive-thru testing sites. Verily, the health research subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet, confirmed the news.

“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,” the company wrote in a statement.

Trump said Google had 1,700 engineers working on the effort, though he painted a different picture of the project’s timeline:

“It’s going to be very quickly done, unlike other websites of the past, to determine if testing is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location,” he said.

As part of that effort, Target, Walmart, CVS Health and Walgreens will open drive-thru Covid-19 testing in their parking lots. CVS Health said details were still being worked out based on the number of tests available and geographic needs, but confirmed it would have testing in parking lots at select stores.

Walgreens is taking a similar approach, with the pharmacy chain saying it would announce the testing locations and timing later in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

Trump also said 5 million tests would be available within a month. The U.S. has been slow to roll out testing for the disease, after the CDC opted to create its own Covid-19 test instead of using the design endorsed by the World Health Organization.

Early problems with the CDC’s tests led to delays in test kits being sent out to states, made more complicated by shortages of the reagents, chemicals needed to isolate the virus’ genetic material. Many hospital leaders have said they still don’t have access to the tests.

With private companies, such as Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp, rolling out their own tests, capacity is expected to increase.

Photo credit: Drew Angerer, Getty Images

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