Verily, the life sciences division of tech giant Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG)(NASDAQ: GOOGL), said today it is part of the effort to combat the COVID-19 respiratory disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus spreading around the world. On Friday, Verily issued a tweet that was disseminated on the feed of fellow Alphabet unit Google Communications. Verily said that "[w]e 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." Verily spokeswoman Carolyn Wang, quoted by CNN, said that "[w]hat we're building is a triage tool that will live on ProjectBaseline.com, and we plan to pilot it in California next week." ProjectBaseline.com is a research project headed by Verily in collaboration with Stanford and Duke Universities and the American Heart Association. It is aimed at "collaborating to build the next generation of healthcare tools and services," as stated on the home page. Image source: Getty Images It seems that Verily's statements were moves to correct remarks made at a White House press conference by president Donald Trump. On Friday, Trump claimed that "Google is helping to develop a website. It's going to be very quickly done, unlike websites of the past, to determine whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location." Alphabet, as the parent company, has not rebutted this assertion; it seems Verily's communication was aimed at indirectly doing so. Regardless, high-visibility tech stock Alphabet was a winner on Friday. The prices of both its publicly traded share classes rose by over 9% on the day. 10 stocks we like better than Alphabet (A shares)When investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.* David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the ten best stocks for investors to buy right now... and Alphabet (A shares) wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys. See the 10 stocks *Stock Advisor returns as of December 1, 2019 Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Eric Volkman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Alphabet (A shares) and Alphabet (C shares). The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.Source