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Santa Barbara County hospitals prepare to implement ‘crisis care’ as COVID-19 hospitalizations shatter daily records.
Crisis care means people with urgent health care needs outside of COVID-19 may not receive the proper care they might normally expect, according to Dr Henning Ansorg, county public health official .
“For example, if someone is suffering from brain bleeding and could be saved by an expert performing a procedure, that may no longer be possible or available simply because hospitals are overloaded with COVID patients,” Ansorg said during the Tuesday’s COVID-19 press briefing. .
With a record 172 COVID-19 patients hospitalized on Tuesday, 75% of hospital beds across the county were in use.
Of those hospitalized with COVID-19, 55 require intensive care and 66.3% of the county’s intensive care beds are occupied by COVID-19 patients.
The county public health department first reported on Tuesday an “adjusted” critical care availability of 0%, a level the Southern California region maintained for nearly three weeks. The actual availability of intensive care in the county is 8.4%.
County hospitals are running out of intensive care beds and had to start using extra beds a few days ago, Public Health Director Van Do-Reynoso said. There were 12 roll-up beds in service on Tuesday, according to the county’s community data dashboard.
“In light of our current situation, I am lost. Honestly, I don’t know what to say anymore, ”said Ansorg, clearly exasperated that many people are not following public health orders to avoid gatherings and travel to reduce the spread of the highly contagious disease.
Do-Reynoso also provided an update on the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine in the county, indicating that 54% of the 16,775 vaccines allocated to the county have already been administered to people eligible for the first phase.
In addition, Santa Barbara County Public Health has received approval from the California Department of Public Health to proceed with the simultaneous vaccination of all three levels of Phase 1A, thereby speeding up the process. This includes most healthcare workers, skilled nursing facility staff and residents, emergency medical service staff, and dialysis center staff.
Public health has approved 42 suppliers to distribute doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, and the suppliers are expanding and working through logistics, Do-Reynoso said.
The county plans to triple the number of providers who will distribute the vaccine in the coming weeks and, overall, to vaccinate about 1,000 people per day by early February.
The vaccine will likely be available to the general public by the end of March or April, according to Do-Reynoso.
Public health officials also reported 341 new cases of COVID-19 and seven additional deaths on Tuesday. All of those who died were over 70, and four deaths were associated with outbreaks in collective living facilities, according to public health.
Two people resided in Santa Barbara, two lived in Santa Maria, one from Goleta, one from the unincorporated area of Goleta, and one from the Santa Ynez Valley.
The cumulative number of COVID-19 deaths in the county since the start of the pandemic is 173.
The number of cases considered still contagious across the county exceeded 2,000, and was 2,105 on Tuesday. There have been 19,019 confirmed cases in Santa Barbara County since the start of the pandemic.
Test positivity rates and daily case rates have also reached record highs. The county has a 17.3% seven-day positivity rate.
| Santa Barbara County | Dec 15 | Dec 22 | Dec 29 | January 5 |
| New positive cases reported in the previous week | 1,268 | 1 445 | 1,541 | 2320 |
| New cases among healthcare workers in the previous week | 54 | 84 | 72 | 50 |
| Total test results reported in the previous week | 17,532 | 18,243 | 15 753 | 12 681 |
| Hospitalized patients positive for COVID-19 | 78 | 103 | 127 | 172 |
| Active cases (still infectious after a positive test) | 1,059 | 1,245 | 1 227 | 2 105 |
| Cumulative COVID-19 deaths | 140 | 150 | 156 | 173 |
“All of these measures are at the highest level they’ve ever been since it started last March,” Do-Reynoso said.
The county is just starting to see the full effects of COVID-19 transmission during the Thanksgiving holiday, Ansorg said, and the impacts of Christmas trips and gatherings will become evident in the weeks to come.
In addition, 28 commercial outbreaks and 48 collective care outbreaks were reported in the county during December, Do-Reynoso said.
Commercial outbreaks have occurred in several sectors including agriculture, administration, retail, manufacturing, healthcare, cleaning services, skilled labor, restaurants, bars, grocery stores, hotels and construction.
“I cannot stress enough that this is truly a call to action for every member of our community,” Do-Reynoso said. “Together we can improve, and we must do it.”
County briefings are now running virtually, with county and public health officials appearing by video conference.
The Tuesday briefing is available to watch on the Santa Barbara County Youtube page here, with English and Spanish versions.
– Jade Martinez-Pogue, editor of Noozhawk (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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