On the last day of 2020, the Santa Barbara County Department of Public Health reported a record high of 396 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday and counted three additional fatalities related to the virus.
The county’s previous one-day COVID-19 daily record, set for Dec. 14, came when the Department of Public Health reported that 360 people were infected.
County public health officials said this week that the number of daily cases, positive tests, active cases and hospitalizations of COVID-19 in the county has been the highest ever recorded during the pandemic months.
“Not only is it picking up unsafe, but we risk losing the extremely limited hospital beds we have left and exhausting the health care staff who have tirelessly cared for our community,” public health director Van Do-Reynoso said Wednesday.
Thursday’s most recent report brings the county’s total case to 17,391 Santa Barbara County residents who tested positive for COVID-19, while the confirmed death toll was 160, according to the Department of Public Health.
The people who died “resided in the Santa Barbara and Mission Canyon regions, Lompoc and the communities of Mission Hills and Vandenberg Village, and the city of Santa Maria,” according to the county’s online data board.
Some geographic areas of the county are grouped in the daily state report COVID-19.
Two people who died of COVID-19 were 70 years of age or older and one mortal was a person between 50 and 69 years of age.
Two residents “had underlying medical conditions” and one death was associated with an outbreak at a congregated facility.
There have been 1,756 new cases in the last seven days in the county, with an average of about 251 cases a day.
COVID-19 hospitalizations continue to rise, and 135 patients were treated at local hospitals on Thursday, the highest daily number since the county’s first positive case in March.
Of these patients, 34 were in intensive care units.
More than 46% of all county ICU beds were occupied by patients with COVID-19, a slight decrease compared to 47.3% the day before.
Intensive care availability in the Southern California region of several counties remained at 0% on Thursday, while county availability fell to 4.4% from 9.5% the previous day. .
Santa Barbara County is grouped in the Southern California region, where ICU availability must increase to 15% or more for the county to exit the regional home stay order.
The number of active cases in the county broke records in a single day, with at least 1,456 residents who have tested positive and are still considered infectious.
During the winter holidays, local public health officials spent the last few weeks asking residents to avoid meeting with people away from home in order to help combat the spread of the rapidly moving virus.
(Scroll down to see a new COVID-19 update from Dra. Lynn Fitzgibbons, a infectious disease specialist at Cottage Health, via YouTube.)
Areas across the county are reporting an increasing number of COVID-19 cases.
Of the new cases reported on Thursday, Santa Maria had 98, Santa Bárbara had 87, Lompoc had 58, Goleta recorded 38, the Montecito-Summerland-Carpinteria area reported 23, and 20 came from Orcutt.
The unincorporated area of the Goleta and Gull Valley and the unincorporated areas of North County had 14 new cases.
The Santa Ynez Valley had eight and Isla Vista reported six.
Geographic locations were pending 30 new cases daily.
The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department reported Thursday that two additional deputies and three inmates had tested positive for COVID-19.
“Both employees were tested as part of ongoing employee surveillance tests and wore masks constantly while working,” Sheriff’s spokeswoman Raquel Zick said, adding that this makes the total number of employees of the sheriff who have tested positive for COVID-19 is 81
Zick claimed that two inmates who were reserved in the main prison near Santa Barbara were COVID-19 positive.
“One of the inmates has been released since then,” he said. “A third inmate of the general population has been found to be positive on COVID-19. All inmates who had direct contact with this positive inmate on COVID-19 have been negative, but will be housed separately and monitored.” .
There are eight inmates considered with active cases of COVID-19 and a total of 98 inmates in the main prison who have tested positive so far on COVID-19.
Zick stated that every positive COVID-19 inmate is housed in accommodation areas with negative air pressure and “are constantly monitored by medical staff”.
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