On the last day of 2020, the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department reported an all-time daily high of 396 new COVID-19 cases Thursday, and three additional virus-related fatalities.
The province’s previous one-day record of new daily COVID-19 cases, set on Dec. 14, occurred when the Public Health Department reported that 360 people were infected.
County public health officials said this week that the COVID-19 number of new daily cases, positivity testing, active cases, and hospitalizations is the largest ever reported during the months-long pandemic.
“Not only is collection unsafe, but we risk losing the extremely limited hospital beds we still have, and exhausting the health care workers who have tirelessly cared for our community,” Van Do-Reynoso Health Director said in a statement on Wednesday.
Thursday’s latest report brings the county’s total number of cases to 17,391 Santa Barbara County residents who tested positive for COVID-19, while the confirmed death toll was 160, according to the Public Health Department.
Those who died “lived in the regions of Santa Barbara and Mission Canyon, Lompoc and the Mission Hills and Vandenberg Village communities, and the city of Santa Maria,” the county’s online data dashboard said.
Some geographic areas in the province are lumped together in the daily COVID-19 status report.
Two people who died from COVID-19 were 70 years of age and older, and one fatality was a person between the ages of 50 and 69.
Two residents “had underlying medical conditions,” and one death was related to an outbreak at a municipal center.
There have been 1,756 new cases in the province in the past seven days, with an average of nearly 251 cases per day.
The number of hospitalizations in COVID-19 continues to increase, with 135 patients being treated in local hospitals on Thursday, the highest daily number since the county’s first positive case in March.
Of those patients, 34 were in intensive care units.
More than 46% of the county’s total ICU beds were occupied by COVID-19 patients, a slight decrease compared to 47.3% the previous day.
The availability of the intensive care unit in the multi-county Southern California region remained at 0% Thursday, while the availability of the county dropped to 4.4%, from 9.5% the day before.
Santa Barbara County is grouped into the Southern California region where ICU availability must increase to 15% or higher before the county abandons the regional stay-home order.
The number of active cases in the county destroyed records for a single day, with at least 1,456 residents who have tested positive and are still considered contagious.
During the winter holidays, local public health officials have been asking residents for the past few weeks not to gather with people outside their households to help combat the spread of the fast-moving virus.
(Scroll down to watch a new COVID-19 update by Dr. Lynn Fitzgibbons, infectious disease specialist at Cottage Health, via YouTube)
Areas across the country are reporting an increasing number of COVID-19 cases.
Of the new cases reported Thursday, Santa Maria had reported 98, Santa Barbara 87, Lompoc 58, Goleta 38, the Montecito-Summerland-Carpinteria area, 23, and 20 were from Orcutt.
The unincorporated area of Goleta Valley and Gaviota and the unincorporated areas of North County each had 14 new cases.
The Santa Ynez Valley had eight and Isla Vista reported six.
Geographic locations were pending for 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 worker surveillance testing, and they consistently wore masks while on the job,” said Sheriff spokeswoman Raquel Zick, adding that this brings the total number of sheriff employees who tested positive for COVID-19 to 81.
Two inmates admitted to the main prison near Santa Barbara were found to be COVID-19 positive during the intake process, Zick said.
“One of the prisoners has since been released,” she said. “A third inmate in the general population appears to be COVID-19 positive. All inmates who have had direct contact with this COVID-19 positive inmate have tested negative but will be housed and monitored separately.”
There are eight inmates with active COVID-19 cases under consideration, 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 residential areas with negative air pressure, Zick said, and “are consistently monitored by medical personnel.”
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