Google offers costly rapid COVID testing to employees while contract workers wait

According to a document reviewed by Bloomberg, Alphabet Inc. allows US full-time employees and their dependents to request COVID-19 tests from Q Health Inc., which provide at-home results within minutes. Contract workers who must report in person to Google’s offices receive PCR tests by BioIQ, which they can prepare and mail to a lab, according to a document tweeted by the Alphabet workers union on Tuesday. .

Convenient access to high-quality COVID-19 testing has become a marker of social inequalities in the US, with the spread of the Omicron variant causing a rise in virus cases, while lines for testing have lengthened nationwide, while supplies – Domestic tests have won and prices for them have risen in the secondary market. Access to testing has eroded so much that US President Joseph Biden on Monday required insurance companies to cover the cost of at-home testing, and said the government would soon make 500 million tests available for free.

Google’s direct employees have long enjoyed the benefits of the company’s vendors, temporary and contract employees, whose numbers exceed or exceed direct employees, go without. For example, contractors are not able to request an additional computer monitor through Google’s intranet and do not receive Alphabet stock as part of their compensation. In America, that division now extends to their health.

A Google spokesperson said in a statement, “We have a number of at-home and in-person viral testing options available for free to our employees and members of our expanded workforce, including Temps and Vendors.” ” The company said by providing the test, it was easing existing pressure on public testing resources.

Google parent Alphabet directly employs over 150,000 people. The company does not disclose the totals of its contract and vendor employees.

Google sends employees a Q device and 10 rapid, at-home molecular tests, which cost consumers $949 and are generally considered to be more accurate than antigen testing, as they can detect the virus’s genetics rather than hunting for specific proteins. Can detect small amounts of material. on the surface of the virus. Full-time employees who are not required to live on campus can request up to 20 additional cue tests per month for themselves and dependents ages 2 and older through an internal portal, according to one person. Such employees are allowed to work from home indefinitely.

According to a document reviewed by Bloomberg, those who work in select US data centers, including contract and temporary workers, get access to the $75 Lucira Check It single-use rapid test. Google said they gain access to Q readers on the site, but not at home. All workers, including contractors, have access to in-person testing at major offices in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York and Seattle, according to two people familiar with the situation, who asked not to be identified while discussing internal policies.

This story has been published without modification in text from a wire agency feed. Only the title has been changed.