UPDATED with Google statement: Covid case numbers among Google employees in Los Angeles have continued to rise after an outbreak was first reported by Deadline two weeks ago. The good news is that the rate of rise is lower this week than it had been previously.
Last week, the company’s Silicon Beach campus in Venice recorded 145 infections, while its massive Playa Vista complex saw an outbreak of 135 cases. This week, according to the Los Angeles Department of Public Health dashboard, those numbers have risen to 152 and 155, respectively, for a total of 307 infections.
That’s up 13% from last week’s infection total of 280, but nowhere near the nearly 100% week-over-week rise reported by Google last week.
Google Spokesperson Bailey Tomson told Deadline today, “The health and safety of our Google community remains our top priority, and we have many safety measures in place to ensure a safe environment for anyone in our offices. There has not been a significant increase of onsite Covid-19 transmission on our campuses. The numbers that have been reported in Playa Vista and Venice reflect total cases over the last few months, not current or active cases.”
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The Google outbreak remains among the biggest currently listed for any L.A. County employer. But it’s no longer THE biggest. That ignominious distinction goes to the TSA at LAX. Its employee outbreak rose from 274 infections last week to 365 this week.
PREVIOUSLY on August 22: The number of Covid infections among Los Angeles-area Google employees nearly doubled over the weekend, according to the count on the county’s official Covid workplace outbreak site.
On Friday, Deadline reported that the tech giant’s stylish Silicon Beach campus in Venice had recorded 145 infections. This morning, the L.A. County Public Health dashboard showed another 135 newly-tallied cases at the company’s massive Playa Vista complex. (There were another another 15 infections listed Friday for the Venice campus that no longer appear today.)
Combined, those 280 infections constitute the largest current tally for any employer in the county.
At LAX, 274 TSA employees are listed infected. Likewise 234 American Airlines workers. Those entities, however, are not only consumer-facing, but likely deal with the largest amount of foot traffic in the county.
Google has 2,000 employees in Los Angeles, according to reporting by the Los Angeles Business Journal last year. If that is accurate, it would mean that 14% of the company’s workforce has been hit recently.
Specifically, the county outbreak dashboard lists Google’s “Hercules Campus at Playa Vista – Spruce Goose Hangar,” the dazzlingly revamped version of Howard Hughes’ old facility, into which the company moved in 2018.
The status of the outbreak at Google is hard to know. Deadline reached out to the tech giant and will add any comment received. There could be a lag time between infection, detection, the reporting thereof, and when the county dashboard finally reflects that count, but the LADPH site is updated daily and did not list the Hercules Campus outbreak on Friday.