39
SACRAMENTO, CA – The California Department of Public Health announced today that a record breaking 52,281 new COVID-19 confirmed cases were reported today and 346 new deaths.
Here’s what the department said:
- There were 52,281 newly recorded confirmed cases Wednesday. Numbers do not represent true day-over-day change as these results include cases from prior to yesterday. Today’s numbers are slightly higher due to the implementation of an auto-processing feature to track report the large volume of COVID-19 cases. In collaboration with counties, on December 13, the state began automatically processing positive cases reported by laboratories and these cases are reflected in our public reporting. Typically, local public health departments receive cases into an inbox and manually process those cases, however, with high transmission rates, this has become increasingly difficult. The auto processing feature ensures that local public health officials can quickly determine when cases occurred, which gives us all a better sense of COVID-19’s trajectory.
- The 7-day positivity rate is 12.8% and the 14-day positivity rate is 11.5%.
- There have been 28,456,358 tests conducted in California. This represents an increase of 306,768 over the prior 24-hour reporting period.
- As case numbers continue to rise in California, the total number of individuals who will have serious outcomes will also increase. There have been 21,860 COVID-19 deaths since the start of the pandemic.