Tech

Alphabet's Verily expands its coronavirus screening sites to two more California counties

Key Points
  • Alphabet's Verily expanded its COVID-19 screening and testing sites to California's Lake Elsinore City in Riverside County and in Sacramento County. 
  • The effort launched March 15 in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. 
Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Google
Michael Short | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Alphabet's Verily announced Monday it has expanded its COVID-19 screening and testing sites to two new locations in California.

People in Lake Elsinore City in Riverside County and in Sacramento County can now use Verily's site to be screened for the new coronavirus and potentially directed to testing locations. The effort launched March 15 in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. 

The screening site is a collaboration between Verily and the California governor's office and other local, state and federal officials. Verily did not respond to a request for comment regarding federal funding. 

"In the first week of operations, we scaled testing to 20X the capacity at launch, testing over 1,200 individuals at initial sites in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties," the company said in a blog post. "Now, we are adding a self-service scheduling capability for eligible individuals to the Baseline COVID-19 screening tool, further increasing efficiency across all testing sites."

The website lets users take an online COVID-19 "screener survey," which directs patients to testing sites in the four counties. In order to be eligible, users must be at least 18 years old, a U.S. resident, able to speak and read English, located in one of the available counties, and willing to sign the COVID-19 Public Health "authorization form."

Verily launched a pilot of its screening site just two days after President Donald Trump announced the company's efforts at a press conference. However, Trump's announcement reportedly came before Alphabet was ready to go public with the news, causing broad confusion about the scope of the site. 

Verily previously told CNBC that while it hopes to scale nationwide, it has no particular timeline.

- CNBC's Jennifer Elias contributed to this report. 

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