Gov. Gavin Newsom said the California Department of Public Health has begun gathering data from counties that allows officials to analyze COVID-19 data on the basis of race.

During a Wednesday press briefing, Newsom said the state now has information on the race and ethnicities of close to 40 percent of the 16,957 people who have tested positive for the novel coronavirus in California.

“We have 6,306 total cases that we’ve been able to analyze on the basis of race,” Newsom said. “Looking at the total number of positive cases from a racial and ethnic lens and the total number of deaths.”

According to data compiled by this news organization, the number of confirmed positive tests in the state of California topped 17,000 on Tuesday evening.

Of the 6,306 positive cases health officials in the state have analyzed so far, the governor said 30 percent of the cases have been identified as Latinos, 14 percent as Asians and six percent from within the black community. The remaining 50 percent are presumably white or unidentified.

“It tracks modestly so along the lines of total population,” Newsom said.

Newsom did not provide the total number of patients who have died from COVID-19 within the 6,306-patient subset the state has analyzed on the basis of race, but said 29 percent of the deaths have been identified as Latinos, 16 percent as Asians and three percent as blacks.

After saying Tuesday he wanted to wait until state officials had gathered racial data on 100 percent of the people who have tested positive in California to release information, Newsom’s decision to release partial data represented a change in his stance.

“I said yesterday I wanted to wait until all of that data was presented, but understandably, people are eager for transparency in real-time,” Newsom said.

Upon releasing the first update that included a racial and ethnic breakdown, the governor said “it’s one thing to have that data, but it’s another to do something with it, to make the data actionable.”

Newsom added, “In every category, we are doing more to be culturally competent in terms of our testing, our outreach, our communication and our capacity to deliver care to individuals that do get tested.”

The governor said Wednesday 442 individuals have now died from the novel coronavirus in the state of California, which represents an increase of 18 percent in the state’s COVID-19 death toll since he last briefed the press on Tuesday. Related Articles There’s live theater to see in the East Bay — all you need is GPS

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“Sadly, we had one of our highest death rates in the state so far and that was 68 individuals that passed away over the last 24 hours,” Newsom said.

At the same time, the increases in hospitalization and ICU rates slowed on Wednesday, Newsom said. The governor said 2,714 individuals who have tested positive for COVID-19 are hospitalized around the state, including 1,154 who are in intensive care unit beds. The spike in the hospitalization rate is 3.9 percent and the increase in the number of individuals in ICU beds is 4.2 percent.