President Trump said Friday that Google is building a website to help people determine whether they need a test for COVID-19 and that "Google has 1700 engineers working on this right now." But Google says that Verily, the life sciences unit of its parent company Aphabet, is "in the early stages of development" on such a tool.
By the numbers: Verily has 1,000 employees in total.
"Google is helping to develop a website," Trump said. "It's going to be very quickly done, unlike Websites of the past — to determine if a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby, convenient location."
Google said in a tweet that workers at its Verily unit "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 said in the tweet.
Google declined to comment beyond the tweet.
The big picture: Google has lots of employees in other parts of the company working on other virus-related issues....
- It has been working with public health authorities across the globe to ensure authoritative information is displayed any time someone enters a virus-related search query.
- And teams in search, advertising and YouTube are working to prevent misinformation and profiteering.