Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said that the novel coronavirus has hit the city employee ranks hard. One city worker has died from the illness in recent days, officials said.

“It saddens me very deeply that we have lost from our own city family,” Garcetti said during his daily briefing.

There were no further details about which departments the employee worked in.

Garcetti, who had initially said two employees had died, said their identities were “not public yet. When families allow us to, we’ll share that information of two people that I believe now have died who are city employees.”

A mayoral aide later corrected the number of city workers who died to one.

Over the past several weeks, public officials have shared numbers of confirmed cases from the city police, fire and county sheriff’s and fire departments. Fewer details have been available about other city departments, but there have been reports trickling out of cases.

A mayoral spokesman said such figures have not been reported due to a wider policy to respect the privacy of the city workforce and their families, but he said there was an understandable public interest.

In recent weeks, there has been more attention paid to essential public employees, such as bus drivers, who have died, and who may have been exposed to COVID-19 on the job.

“This is touching everybody,” Garcetti said Friday. “It wasn’t just lip service these were going to be tough days. I said this was going to hit us. They’re going to hit the people we work with. They are going to hit our families, they are going to hit our neighbors. And we are still in that period.”

Garcetti said Friday that in the Los Angeles Police Department, there have been 52 confirmed cases, 40 of whom are sworn police officers and 12 are civilians. Of the total, 10 have returned to duty, and two are in the hospital.

Among the Los Angeles Fire Department ranks, 15 employees have tested positive for COVID-19, with 14 of them sworn and one a civilian employee. Five of them have returned to duty, and one is in the hospital.

Update: The story was changed to reflect that there is only one city employee who died, instead of two.