San Francisco, Aug 8 (IANS): The number of coronavirus deaths in California, the new epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US, has surpassed the 10,000 mark, according to the state's Department of Public Health.

COVID-19 deaths in the country's most populous state increased to 10,011 on Friday after 142 new fatalities were reported in the last 24 hours, Xinhua news agency reported citing the Department as saying.

California now accounts for the third-highest number of coronavirus deaths in the US.

New York tops the list with more than 32,000 deaths, followed by New Jersey with nearly 16,000 fatalities.

Meanwhile, confirmed COVID-19 cases in California increased to a total of 538,416 after by 8,436 new infections were reported on Friday.

Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly disclosed that a glitch has led to a backlog of between 250,000 and 300,000 unprocessed health records in California, many of them COVID-19 test results.

But Ghaly insisted that the overall COVID-19 trends in the state remained consistent, since not all of the logged records are confirmed infection cases and some may be duplicates.

The state has conducted 8,596,882 tests, which represent an increase of 96,419 over the prior 24-hour reporting period.