New Website Aims to Help People Access COVID-19 Testing

Project Baseline, a new website to facilitate screening and testing of people potentially infected with the COVID-19 virus, became available on Sunday. Verily, a company owned by Google parent Alphabet, launched the site.

Access requires a Google login, and assistance currently is limited to residents in two counties in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In addition to administering the website, Verily, which focuses on health and life sciences, is working with state, local and federal authorities to establish testing sites in the Bay Area.

Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai also announced the companies are partnering with the federal government on a COVID-19 education and prevention, and a local resources website, expected to go live late Monday.

The site's focus is on best practices for prevention, with links to authoritative information from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), as well as helpful tips and tools for individuals, teachers and businesses.

Privacy Concerns

Before Verily's testing site was 24 hours old, there were signs it already might be having traffic problems.

"When I tested it [(Monday], after answering questions in a way that would qualify me in terms of geography and lack of initial symptoms, it said it's not accepting any more applicants," said Michael Arrigo, an expert witness in healthcare who lives in the Bay Area.

"It seems like it's not allowing people to be screened in the counties where they could be screened," he told TechNewsWorld.

Google did not respond to our request to comment for this story.

The Verily website raises privacy concerns, Arrigo noted.

"It's not clear to consumers that the information Verily is gathering is being given to entities not covered by HIPAA," he explained.

HIPAA, the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, protects the privacy of healthcare information collected in the United States.

"Verily is interested in capturing a lot of information," Arrigo continued, "but there should be more information up front for the consumer."

At this point, the benefits of the site are unclear, he said, "but one thing that's clear is there's tremendous benefit for Google in collecting data."

Google Responds to COVID-19

The new website launches were among a number of things Pichai said the Alphabet companies were doing in response to the spreading coronavirus, including the following:

• Taking down thousands of dangerous or misleading videos about the virus on YouTube and removing false and harmful information on Google Maps, such as false reviews and bogus information about healthcare locations.
• Blocking hundreds of thousands of ads attempting to exploit the pandemic, including a temporary ban on ads for medical masks and respirators.
• Making a commitment of US$50 million through Google.org to the global COVID-19 response.
• Matching up to $5 million in donations to the WHO's new COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund.
• Awarding a $500,000 grant to a team of researchers, epidemiologists and software developers at Boston Children's Hospital working on HealthMap, a website that provides up-to-date trends of emerging public health threats and outbreaks.
• Creating COVID-19 public service announcements through the $25 million Google Ad Grants crisis relief program.
• Establishing a COVID-19 fund to provide paid sick leave to temporary staff and vendors who miss work because they have potential symptoms of the virus or are quarantined.

"In this unprecedented moment, we feel a great responsibility to help," said Pichai. "We'll keep doing everything we can to deliver on our mission, and help people take care of themselves and their communities."