California will not renew its coronavirus testing partnership with the life sciences company Verily, marking the end of a highly-touted effort that sought to use Silicon Valley expertise to battle the pandemic but garnered widespread criticism.
State officials have consolidated Verily’s remaining testing sites under another vendor and declined to renew its two existing contracts when they expire in mid-January and late February, according to the California Department of Public Health.
Combined, the contracts with the company, a subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet, cost the state $62.5 million and covered more than 100 fixed and mobile testing sites across 30 counties.
Verily’s testing program has been in the national spotlight last March, when former President Donald Trump erroneously claimed Google was building a website to help Americans find coronavirus testing. That same week, following Verily’s establishment of testing centers in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, Gov. Gavin Newsom billed the company’s pilot programs as a hopeful “national model.”
Newsom later said the sites would capture rural and urban Californians disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 and “make sure we’re truly testing California broadly defined, not just parts of California.”
But the partnership has also faced criticism from public health experts from the start, and left some elected officials in California frustrated by what they describe as a misguided approach to testing vulnerable communities.
In response to questions about why the contracts were not renewed, the California Department of Public Health said that another company, OptumServe, won a competitive bid “to reduce costs and streamline testing” through April of this year. Verily spokesperson Rachel Ford Hutman said the company was told “that CDPH wanted to streamline resources with one vendor.”
Neither the state nor Verily responded to follow-up questions clarifying whether Verily was among the competitive bidders. The company will continue to provide testing in California through a separate deal with drugstore chain Rite Aid.
“We retain a great relationship with the state, and have been putting in a huge, unpaid effort to ensure there's a smooth transition of the sites Verily has supported to another vendor to ensure continuity and a good handoff,” Ford Hutman said.
Because Verily did not conduct its own testing or processing, the company passed costs from subcontractors, like commercial labs, to the state. Some critics believe that led to higher prices, with the average cost per Verily test ranging from $83 to $159 in 2020, according to CDPH. Newsom’s office has since named a cost-per-test goal of $31 with diagnostics company PerkinElmer.
Last September, San Mateo County entered a direct contract with Verily for a mobile testing site, said Deputy County Manager Justin Mates. Each COVID-19 test cost about $128, a price tag that contributed to the county’s decision not to renew the contract in January.
When asked directly how Verily’s cost-per-test and insurance billing influenced the state's decision, CDPH said it chose OptumServe for “many reasons, one of which was reducing costs and responsibilities for counties that previously used county personnel and resources in order to operationalize Verily sites.”
The department said it’s working to bill insurers for Verily tests, though it would not say how much it expects to be reimbursed. Verily, meanwhile, claims the state never activated an insurance billing feature it created.
Despite Newsom’s promise of an equitable testing model, Verily has also faced criticisms over the accessibility of its testing, including complaints that patients had to use a Google account with the platform and schedule appointments online, which proved difficult for those without smartphones or who spoke languages other than English and Spanish.
Alameda County officials, including Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and Assemblymember Rob Bonta, voiced those concerns in a June letter to Health and Human Services Director Mark Ghaly, asking the state to add more sign-up options for its Verily sites and stop using the platform for walk-up testing. By October, Oakland and San Francisco had put their relationships with the company on hold.
"It bears repeating, we were asked by the state of California to help with COVID-19 screening and testing efforts in March — when none were available anywhere. In a matter of days, we stood up testing sites — initially at risk — with the combined efforts of over 1,000 company volunteers from Verily and Alphabet," Ford Hutman said, adding that Verily worked with counties directly to solve problems at different sites.
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