Updated with launch of pilot site Sunday evening:

Google LLC said Friday its sister company Verily Life Sciences LLC is helping the federal government to build a new online tool to help some Americans get tested for the coronavirus.

Verily, which is owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc., said the tool would first be rolled out in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Google has its headquarters.

Statement from Verily: “We are 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.

— Google Communications (@Google_Comms) March 13, 2020

Google’s original announcement came just an hour after U.S. President Donald Trump held a press conference, where he revealed Google is working with the government to help create a website that provides in-depth information to people on the coronavirus and how to get tested. Trump announced the project as he declared the COVID-19 pandemic was a national state of emergency.

“Google is going to develop a website — it’s going to be very quickly done, unlike websites of the past — to determine if a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location,” Trump said at Friday’s press conference. “We have many, many locations behind us, by the way. We cover this country and large parts of the world, by the way. We’re not gonna be talking about the world right now, but we cover very, very strongly our country. Stores in virtually every location. Google has 1,700 engineers working on this right now. They have made tremendous progress.”

Update: Verily launched the pilot screening and testing website just in the Bay Area Sunday evening with the California governor’s office and other state, federal and local officials. Users must have a Google account and share data with the company to qualify for screening.

The site guides people through a multistep process to take an online “screener survey,” that then directs patients to testing sites in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.

Those who meet the testing eligibility requirements will be directed to mobile testing sites “based on capacity,” where they will complete a nasal swab test and then be notified of results “within a few days.”

There was some confusion following the initial reports, with some describing the new website as a “nationwide” tool, but that apparently won’t be the case. Instead, Verily’s website will initially be available be on a much smaller scale, and will only be able to direct residents of the Bay Area to coronavirus testing facilities.

Verily’s communications chief Carolyn Wang later said in a statement to The Verge that the “triage website” was initially going to be made available only to healthcare workers, rather than to the general public. She said later that although it will now be open to anyone, it will only be able to direct people to “pilot sites” for tests in the Bay Area. Wang did say, however, the site’s capabilities could be expanded “beyond California” at a later date.

The triage site was set to go live in a couple of days, but that timeline clearly was moved up. It’s hosted on a Verily website called Project Baseline, which enables people to sign up to take part in clinical trials. According to Wang, that’s because the Baseline site already has tools such as an informed-consent agreement.

Analyst Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. told SiliconANGLE it’s good to see companies like Google work closely with the government during what is now both a global pandemic and a national emergency in the United States.

“Google is a great partner choice here given its consumer facing experience, its Google Maps assets, rapid application development and the machine learning capabilities on the Google cloud platform,” Mueller said. “Let’s hope this will be a showcase for more public private partnerships.”

Google’s and Verily’s efforts come as the coronavirus outbreak continues to affect everyday life across the world. Google has already asked all of its North American employees to work from home where possible, and has canceled its annual developer conference Google I/O.

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