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On the last day of 2020, the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department on Thursday reported a daily record of 396 new cases of COVID-19 and listed three more deaths linked to the virus.
The county’s previous one-day record of new daily COVID-19 cases, set on December 14, came when the public health department reported 360 people were infected.
County public health officials said this week that the county’s daily number of new COVID-19 cases, positivity tests, active cases and hospitalizations were the highest on record during the pandemic of several months.
“Not only are gatherings dangerous, but we risk losing the extremely limited hospital beds we have left and exhausting the health workers who have tirelessly cared for our community,” the director of health said on Wednesday. public, Van Do-Reynoso.
Thursday’s latest report brings the total number of cases in the county to 17,391 Santa Barbara County residents who have tested positive for COVID-19, while the confirmed death toll was 160, according to the health department. public.
Those who died “resided in the unincorporated areas of Santa Barbara and Mission Canyon, Lompoc and the communities of Mission Hills and Vandenberg Village, as well as in the town of Santa Maria,” according to the County data online.
Certain geographic areas of the county are grouped together in the COVID-19 Daily Situation Report.
Two people who died from COVID-19 were aged 70 and over, and one death was a person aged 50 to 69.
Two residents “had underlying health problems” and one death was associated with an outbreak in a collective facility.
There have been 1,756 new cases in the past seven days in the county, for an average of nearly 251 cases per day.
COVID-19-related hospitalizations continue to rise, with 135 patients being treated at local hospitals on Thursday, the highest daily count since the county’s first positive case in March.
Of these patients, 34 were in intensive care units.
More than 46% of the county’s total intensive care beds were occupied by patients with COVID-19, a slight decrease from 47.3% the previous day.
The availability of intensive care units in the region of several Southern California counties remained at 0% on Thursday, while the county’s availability fell to 4.4%, from 9.5% the day before.
Santa Barbara County is grouped into the Southern California region, where ICU availability must reach 15% or more for the county to leave the regional stay-at-home order.
The number of active cases in the county has broken records in a single day, with at least 1,456 residents who have tested positive and are still considered infectious.
During the winter break, local public health officials have spent the past few weeks asking residents to avoid congregating with people outside their homes in order to combat the spread of the rapidly growing virus.
(Scroll down to watch a new update on COVID-19 by Dr Lynn Fitzgibbons, infectious disease specialist at Cottage Health, via YouTube)
Areas in the county are reporting an increasing number of COVID-19 cases.
Of the new cases reported Thursday, Santa Maria had 98, Santa Barbara had 87, Lompoc had 58, Goleta had 38, the Montecito-Summerland-Carpinteria area had reported 23 and 20 were from Orcutt.
The unincorporated area of Goleta and Gaviota valley and the unincorporated areas of North County each have 14 new cases.
The Santa Ynez Valley had eight and Isla Vista had six.
Geographic locations were pending for 30 new daily cases.
The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department reported Thursday that two additional MPs and three inmates have tested positive for COVID-19.
“Both employees were tested as part of continuous employee monitoring tests, and they routinely wore masks at work,” Sheriff spokeswoman Raquel Zick said, adding that this brings the total number to 81. sheriff’s employees who tested positive for COVID-19.
Two inmates enrolled at the main prison near Santa Barbara tested positive for COVID-19 during the admissions process, Zick said.
“One of the detainees has since been released,” she said. “A third inmate in the general population tested positive for COVID-19. All inmates who have had direct contact with this COVID-19 positive inmate have tested negative, but will be housed separately and monitored.
There are eight inmates considered to have active cases of COVID-19, and a total of 98 inmates in the main prison who have tested positive for COVID-19 to date.
Every COVID-19 positive inmate is housed in negative air pressure housing areas, Zick said, and “is constantly monitored by medical staff.”
Noozhawk is asking readers to submit questions about the COVID-19 vaccination process and unanswered questions about the COVID-19 pandemic in the county. Click here for more information.
Click here for the Noozhawk Coronavirus Crisis section.
– Brooke Holland, editor of Noozhawk, can be reached at (JavaScript must be enabled to display this email address). Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
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