California has surpassed 10,000 deaths from the coronavirus, making it the U.S. state with the third-highest number of deaths since the pandemic broke out earlier this year.
The figure was reported Friday, with 10,024 dead since the coronavirus was detected in California in February.
New York and New Jersey have the highest and second highest number of deaths in the U.S. at 32,000 and 16,000, respectively.
The first known COVID-related death in the U.S. occurred in early February in the San Francisco Bay Area county of Santa Clara.
Meanwhile, a top California health official on Friday said a technical glitch that caused a lag in collecting coronavirus test information has been fixed — but it could take up to 48 hours to get the data updated.
Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly says up to 300,000 records might have been backlogged — but not all of them are coronavirus cases and some may be duplicates.
Ghaly says the problem began with a computer server outage in late July.
Despite the lag in numbers, Ghaly said officials believe overall COVID-19 trends remain consistent.
