Alphabet’s Verily Gets 1,000 Google Volunteers for its Drive-thru Coronavirus Testing

Alphabet owned Verily has announced that it has more than 1,000 volunteers from across Alphabet working on its COVID-19 screening and testing efforts.

In a CNBC interview, Verily co-founder Jessica Mega has said the company is considering integrating the screening process through wearables in the future.

According to Mega, there is an “opportunity” for Verily to understand the broader trends of how viruses like COVID-19 spread among communities.

The company also released a video explaining the screening and testing process, including its “drive-thru” testing, manned by the volunteers.

“People across Alphabet are volunteering time (and) I’ve never seen so much commitment to do the right thing,” said Mega.

Verily’s site screens for the new coronavirus and directs people to local testing locations. It launched March 15 in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. On Monday, the company expanded this to Riverside and Sacramento Counties in California.
Mega said Verily would expand to further testing sites after hearing from state health officials about the locations most in need.

According to Mega, as of Wednesday, Verily screened more than 20,000 residents, tested more than 1,200 and have “many hundred more” scheduled to test with the new sites in Riverside and Sacramento.

“We spent several years building a system that enables secure storage of health information and that’s why we employed the Project Baseline platform,” she said. “It’s purpose was built for something like this. We rapidly and responsibly were able to scale up.”

Verily’s efforts are separated from Google’s COVID-19 efforts. “Data collected in this program is separate and it’s not mined with Google data or anything that,” said Mega. “Google has a few other efforts ongoing.”

Disclaimer: We have no position in Alphabet Inc Class A (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and have not been compensated for this article.