The Los Angeles Post

State Officials Announce Latest COVID-19 Facts

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SACRAMENTO – The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) today announced the most recent statistics on COVID-19.

  • The 7-day average number of new cases is 7,060 per day. The 7-day average from the week prior was 8,818. California has 524,722 confirmed cases to date. Numbers may not represent true day-over-day change as reporting of test results can be delayed.
  • There have been 8,409,400 tests conducted in California. This represents an increase of 103,687 over the prior 24-hour reporting period. As testing capacity continues to increase across the state, an increase in the number of positive cases has been expected – increasing the importance of positivity rates to find signs of community spread.
  • As case numbers continue to rise in California, the total number of individuals who will have serious outcomes will also increase. There have been 9,703 COVID-19 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
  • A total of 38 counties are required to close indoor operations for certain sectors based on the July 13 order to slow community transmission.

Data Reporting
CDPH has discovered an underreporting of COVID-19 cases due to technology issues with the electronic laboratory reporting system which reports into the state’s disease registry system (CalREDIE). However, patient care and test results are not affected or delayed by this issue. Laboratories continue to report test results directly to providers and hospitals, and hospitalization and death rates are not impacted as they are reported directly to the state through different systems. This is also likely leading to underreporting of cases at the local level as well.

While clinicians are still able to report to local health departments, this issue may impact a local public health department’s ability to receive all lab reports in order to case investigate and contact trace.

To address this issue, we have taken the following actions:

  • Deployed a team from the Department of Technology to assess the underlying code;
  • Engaged our local public health officers to ensure they have necessary information;
  • Instructed all laboratories in California to manually report all positive cases to the local public health departments.