Dr. Sonia Angell submitted her resignation Sunday evening from her position as director of California’s Department of Public Health (DPH) and as the state’s public health officer in the wake of the discovery of a backlog of 300,000 COVID-19 test results due to computer errors.

Last week, state officials confirmed that an estimated 300,000 test results had not been processed by the computer system utilized to report the results of COVID-19 tests conducted by labs on a daily basis to local officials.

The announcement of Angell’s resignation comes less than a year after she was appointed director of the department by Governor Gavin Newsom.

Newsome was gracious in his statements regarding Angell’s work with the administration, but refused to answer if the resignation was driven by the reporting error.

“It’s one of those difficult things when someone leaves that you consider a friend, someone I respect, someone who was a real champion of racial justice and social justice,” said Newsom in his Monday Coronavirus update. “But the decision is made, we’re moving on.”

The positions previously occupied by Angell are expected to be filled by two women, according to officials.

Sandra Shewry, a vice president at the nonprofit California Health Care Foundation, was announced as acting director of DPH and Dr. Erica Pan, who was appointed California State Epidemiologist and deputy director for the Center for Infectious Diseases at the California Department of Public Health by Newsom in late June, has taken over as acting state public health officer.

Administration officials identified two separate errors as the driving cause of the unprocessed results, one related to a computer server outage and the other having to do with the expiration of an electronic certificate for data to be transferred from Quest Laboratories.

Last week, Newsom had expressed optimism at current case numbers, however he confirmed in his most recent COVID-19 update on Monday that the error in reporting hadn’t been identified until after the optimistic update had been issued.

In the same Monday update, Newsom shared his expectation that the backlogged data would be fully processed within the next 48 to 72 hours, at which point the administration would be able to provide an accurate case number as well as updated 7-day and 14-day positivity rates.

While the reported case numbers and positivity rates have been affected by the reporting error, other key metrics have not been affected, including hospitalizations and ICU numbers, which are gathered under a different system, according to Newsom.

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