On Sunday, Santa Barbara County continued to experience an alarming increase in daily cases of COVID-19, with a record 779 new virus-related infections reported.
Sunday marked by far the highest single-day number of new COVID-19 cases since the county’s first positive case in March.
The previous discharge was 512 cases three days earlier, on January 7.
No further deaths from COVID-19 were reported in the county on Sunday.
The county’s overall positive cases rose to 21,323, and the cumulative number of deaths remained at 197.
Updated COVID-19 hospitalization data in the county, including the number of patients requiring treatment in intensive care units, were not available on Sunday, according to the Santa Barbara County Community Data Dashboard.
The information “will be reported as soon as it becomes available,” said the county’s Department of Public Health.
Of the new cases on Sunday, Santa Maria had 205, Santa Bárbara registered 183, the Montecito-Summerland-Carpinteria area registered 64, Lompoc had 60, Goleta reported 56, Orcutt registered 45 and the Santa Ynez Valley had 43.
There were 35 in the unincorporated area of Vale do Goleta and Gaviota, along with 10 on Isla Vista and 18 in the unincorporated area of Northern County.
Geographic locations were pending in 60 cases.
There were 2,129 still infectious cases of COVID-19 across the county as of Sunday.
Santa Barbara County has reported 1,379 new cases of COVID-19 in the past three days, according to the county’s community data panel.
The county’s COVID-19 data panel indicates that the “adjusted” availability of ICUs in Santa Barbara County and the region of several counties in Southern California remained at 0%.
Santa Barbara County is grouped in the greater Southern California region, where the availability of ICU must increase to 15% or more for the county to leave the regional home stay application.
The county’s Department of Public Health’s COVID-19 website, publichealthsbc.org, offers information on what to do if you test positive for COVID-19 or suspect you have COVID-19, as well as home isolation and quarantine instructions. Click here for more info.
Click here to see the Noozhawk Coronavirus Crisis section.
– Brooke Holland, editor of the Noozhawk team, can be reached at . (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.