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As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, California health providers are now required to collect new data on gender identity and sexual orientation from patients infected with the virus to better understand the impact on diverse communities.

The California Department of Public Health and Human Services announced on Tuesday that effective immediately, health care providers and labs will be asking coronavirus patients for the voluntary information related to their sexual orientation and gender identity.

Dr. Mark Ghaly, the agency’s secretary, said at a news conference Tuesday that preparations for the new data collection has been underway for months and described it as “our eyes and our ears.”

“It’s like using binoculars that help us see a little further out,” Ghaly explained. “We will use this data to effectively see how our interventions are working and what more we need to do in California to not just address the COVID-19 situation, but also to close disparities.”

LGBTQ community advocates, including Equality California, have been asking for the collection and reporting of the personal data for months. The organization applauded the state’s response.

“The COVID-19 crisis has devastated the LGBTQ+ community. But for months, we haven’t had the data to understand how, why or exactly what to do about it,” Rick Chavez Zbur, executive director of Equality California, said in a statement. “From the beginning of this crisis, we have been clear: If LGBTQ+ people are left out of COVID-19 data, we will be left out of California’s data-driven response. Thanks to Governor Newsom’s leadership and his administration’s hard work, we will start to have answers.”

Zbur said data collection is needed for a greater understanding because the LGBTQ community is more susceptible to impacts of COVID-19 due to its higher rates for HIV/AIDS, cancer, homelessness and respiratory illness from smoking.

The new data collection regulations also apply to all reportable diseases in California, not just COVID-19, state officials said.

While health care providers have been required to report race and ethnicity data to the state, the information is still missing from nearly 36% of cases statewide. Ghaly said improvement in that area of data collection is also at the department’s forefront.

“We need that data to improve so we have a better sense of where transmission is happening, which communities are impacted and the magnitude of that impact would be,” Ghaly said.

For instance, state officials have said the Latino population has been disproportionately impacted. Latinos makes up almost 39% of the state’s population, but account for 56% of total COVID-19 cases — up from 47% in May — as well as 46% of coronavirus deaths.

As of Tuesday, there were 466,550 cases of coronavirus reported statewide and 8,518 deaths.