The California Department of Public Health announced the most recent statistics on COVID-19 Saturday. California now has 28,963 confirmed cases and 1,072 deaths.

Racial Demographics

As of April 17, data on race and ethnicity is complete for 67 percent of COVID-19 cases and 90 percent of deaths reported to the California Department of Public Health. As testing expands and our work to get more complete information by race and ethnicity advances, the distribution by race and ethnicity for cases may change. As information on race and ethnicity is becoming more complete on reported deaths, our data shows that African Americans/Blacks represent a disproportionately higher number of deaths compared to their representation in California’s population. Another group of heightened concern are Native Hawaiians or Pacific Islanders, although the number of deaths in this population are small and therefore limits statistical comparison.

Health Care Worker Infection Rates

As of April 17, local health departments have reported 3,370 confirmed positive cases in health care workers. This includes on-the-job exposures, and other exposures, such as travel and close family contact. As testing capacity continues to increase, and more tests are being conducted directly in physician’s offices and processed through commercial laboratories, local public health officials will not be able to report the source of exposure for every affected health care worker.

Testing in California

As of April 17, more than 266,900 tests had been conducted in California. At least 259,666 results have been received and another 7,200 are pending. These numbers include data California has received from commercial, private and academic labs, including Quest, LabCorp, Kaiser, University of California and Stanford, and the 22 state and county health labs currently testing.