• Google is building a website to help screen Americans for the coronavirus.
  • President Donald Trump announced the effort at a press conference on Friday.
  • There are 1,700 engineers working on the project, which will launch on Sunday.
  • The US government is preparing to roll out a new drive-thru testing process in partnership with private companies.
  • Trump has declared a national emergency over the coronavirus outbreak.

Google is building a website to help screen Americans for the coronavirus and then direct them to testing sites if necessary, President Donald Trump said.

At a press conference at the White House on Friday, Trump said the California-based search-engine giant has 1,700 engineers at work to build a website that people concerned they may have COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, will be able to visit.

Users will be directed to fill out a questionnaire, including detailing any symptoms, and if deemed necessary, they will be directed to a nearby drive-thru test site in a network that the US government is preparing to roll out across the country.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. “Google has 1,700 engineers working on this right now; they’ve made tremendous progress,” Trump said. The website will launch on Sunday, Vice President Mike Pence said.

Trump has declared a national emergency over the coronavirus outbreak, which has sickened more than 128,000 people and killed more than 4,700 globally, and is now present in at least 46 US states.

Later on Friday, Google's official press account tweeted that Verily, a healthtech company that is owned by Google parent Alphabet, is developing a tool to help "triage individuals for Covid-19 testing."

"Verily is in the early stages of development, and planning to roll testing out in the Bay Area, with the hope of expanding more broadly over time," the tweet said. It was not immediately clear if that effort was the same one as the website effort described by Trump and Pence earlier in the day.

Google thanked government officials, industry partners, and "the Google engineers who have volunteered to be part of this effort," it said in a follow-up tweet about the Verily project.

The coronavirus pandemic has caused chaos around the world, forcing entire countries to go on lockdown, prompting the cancellation of numerous major events and sporting events and disrupting businesses' operations. Google itself has asked its workers in the US and in international offices throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Africa to work at home in order to prevent the spread of the disease.