Alphabet has started rolling out its site for free coronavirus screening

Just a heads up, if you buy something through our links, we may get a small share of the sale. It’s one of the ways we keep the lights on here. Click here for more.

Announced by Donald Trump last week (incorrectly), Verily, an Alphabet company, has started to roll out its free coronavirus screening site for users in select parts of California. Basically, users should be able to answer the questions presented, and possibly, qualify for free testing at an eligible testing center.

This is all part of Alphabet’s larger initiative, Project Baseline. Verily describes Project Baseline as “an initiative to make it easy and engaging for people like you to contribute to the map of human health and participate in clinical research.”

For the coronavirus (COVID-19), this will start with this online testing in two locations in California – Santa Clara County and San Mateo County. There has been no word on when (or if) more locations will be made available in the coming days and weeks. The online questionnaire requires a Google account, which many people are not happy about, and after finishing the test, the company will send the results through email.

That said, it seems the test is a bit inconsistent at this point. TheNextWeb notes that “some people said they just saw one question in the survey, and some said they’re being told they’re ineligible for a test, even after they answered questions stating that they had symptoms of coronavirus.”

What do you think? Would you like to see Alphabet and Verily expand this service to more locations? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

• Due to coronavirus, Apple Card holders can skip their March payment without penalty
• Grubhub is helping restaurants affected by the coronavirus by eliminating commission fees
• Due to coronavirus quarantines, gamers in Italy are clogging up the country’s bandwidth
• AT&T is waiving data cap fees for home internet customers in response to the coronavirus