State COVID-19 cases reach 20,000-plus mark as of Friday

This image shows SARS-CoV-2 (yellow) — also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19 — from a patient in the U.S. Image via NIAID-RML

The California Department of Public Health announced Saturday that the total number of COVID-19 coronavirus cases in the state had reached 20,615, with 609 deaths as of Friday.

The majority of the cases are among people ages 18-49, with the total case count in that age category at 10,069, health officials said.

People older than 50 are broken into two groups. There are 5,633 cases among those 50-64 and 4,561 among those 65 and older. Together they account for 10,194 cases.

Only 303 people under 17 are confirmed to have COVID-19.

At least 2,846 people with COVID-19 are hospitalized and 1,145 people are currently in an intensive care unit. Another 2,221 are hospitalized with suspected COVID-19 and 420 of those people are in ICUs.

Health department officials said case numbers per ethnicity were close to the breakdown of the state population in each category: 34 percent of the current cases are Latinos (39 percent of the population) and 33 percent are white (37 percent of the population).

Asian Americans accounted for 13 percent of all cases, 15 percent of all deaths and are 17 percent of the state population. African Americans have 7 percent of all cases, 10 percent of all deaths and are 6 percent of the state population, per CDPH numbers.

The ethnic breakdown numbers represent 61 percent of coronavirus cases and 82 percent of all deaths from the illness.

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