Google may end up spending over four million dollars a week on free COVID tests for its 90,000-strong workforce in the US, if all its employees — including those working from home — avail of the latest perk it has offered. The technology company has offered its employees a facility to get tested for COVID-19, at home, every week if they so wish, free of cost. The perk will be made available to Googles at other locations around the world in 2021.
Once an employee puts in a request, she or he will receive a test kit within four days. The nasal swab has to be mailed to the lab, which will then return the results in two days’ time.
Each test will cost Google $50. That means, if all its employees decide to avail the facility, the Company will end up spending about $4.5 million on this facility. Google will make this arrangement available to its employees and interns outside the US next year.
Googlers working at other divisions of the parent company, Alphabet, are also eligible for this free test.
This weekly test will help identify those who do not show any symptoms but may have contracted the virus, and help check the spread of the same.
The Company is thinking of ways to make the vaccine available to its employees by the middle or end of next year.
