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Here’s what is really going on with Google.

Google is working with Verily, a life sciences unit of its parent company Alphabet, to direct individuals with a high risk of coronavirus infection to testing sites.

But the program will not be as sweeping as President Trump suggested. (Google’s shares surged, to a gain of more than 9 percent, as Mr. Trump spoke on Friday.)

Late Friday, Carolyn Wang, a spokeswoman for Verily, said it was hoping to create a website to help “triage” people for virus screening. She said the aim was for the website to be available Monday “at the latest,” but that it would be limited to screening individuals for appointments at testing sites in the Bay Area only.

If the pilot goes well, Verily aims to deploy the project nationwide, but there is no timetable for a national rollout. When asked to confirm Mr. Trump’s statement of 1,700 Google engineers assigned to the project, Ms. Wang declined to comment. She said, however, that the president might have been talking about the number of Google employees who had expressed an interest in volunteering for the project of creating a triage site that would feature a series of questions for people with symptoms of the virus.

Alphabet’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, had sent employees an internal memo on Thursday seeking volunteers to build the website.

“A planning effort is underway to use the expertise in life sciences and clinical research of Verily in partnership with Google to aid in the COVID-19 testing effort,” Mr. Pichai wrote in the memo, which was obtained by The New York Times.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/business/live-stock-market.html