On the last day of 2020, the Santa Barbara County Department of Public Health reported on Thursday a daily high of 396 new cases of COVID-19 and recorded three additional deaths related to the virus.
The county’s previous single-day record of new daily cases of COVID-19, set on December 14, occurred when the Department of Public Health reported 360 people infected.
County public health officials said this week that the county’s COVID-19 number of new daily cases, positivity tests, active cases and hospitalizations were the highest ever recorded during the months-long pandemic.
“Not only is the collection unsafe, but we run the risk of losing the extremely limited hospital beds that we have and exhausting the health team that has tirelessly taken care of our community,” said Director of Public Health Van Do-Reynoso in a statement on Wednesday.
Thursday’s most recent report brings the county’s total cases 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 individuals who died “resided in the regions of Santa Barbara and not incorporated in Mission Canyon, Lompoc and in the communities of Mission Hills and Vandenberg Village and in the city of Santa Maria,” according to the county’s online data panel.
Some geographical areas of the county are grouped in the COVID-19 daily status report.
Two individuals who died of COVID-19 were 70 or older, and one fatality was a person between 50 and 69 years old.
Two residents “had latent medical conditions” and a death was associated with an outbreak in a congregated facility.
In the last seven days, there were 1,756 new cases in the municipality, for an average of almost 251 cases per day.
COVID-19 hospitalizations continue to increase, with 135 patients being 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 the total ICU beds in the municipality were being occupied by COVID-19 patients, a slight reduction compared to 47.3% the previous day.
The availability of intensive care units in the Southern California multi-county region remained at 0% on Thursday, while the county’s availability dropped to 4.4%, from 9.5% the previous day.
Santa Bárbara County is grouped in the Southern California region, where the availability of ICU must increase to 15% or more for the county to leave the regional order of stay at home.
The number of active cases in the county broke records in a single day, with at least 1,456 residents testing positive and are still considered infectious.
During the winter holidays, local public health officials have spent the past few weeks asking residents to avoid meeting with people outside their homes in an effort to help combat the spread of the rapidly moving virus.
(Scroll down to watch a new update on COVID-19 by Dr. Lynn Fitzgibbons, 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 registered on Thursday, Santa Maria had 98, Santa Bárbara 87, Lompoc had 58, Goleta registered 38, the Montecito-Summerland-Carpinteria area reported 23, and 20 came from Orcutt.
The unincorporated area of the Goleta and Gaviota Valley and the unincorporated areas of the Northern County each had 14 new cases.
The Santa Ynez Valley had eight and Isla Vista reported six.
Geographic locations awaited 30 new cases daily.
The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department reported on Thursday that two more deputies and three inmates had tested positive for COVID-19.
“Both employees were tested as part of ongoing employee surveillance tests and consistently wore masks while on the job,” said sheriff spokeswoman Raquel Zick, adding that this raises the total number of sheriff employees tested positive for COVID-19 to 81.
Two detainees who were fined at the Main Prison near Santa Barbara were considered positive for COVID-19 during the admission process, said Zick.
“One of the inmates has already been released,” she said. “A third inmate in the general population was considered COVID-19 positive. All inmates who had direct contact with this positive COVID-19 inmate were negative, but will be housed separately and monitored.”
There are eight prisoners considered to have active cases of COVID-19 and a total of 98 prisoners in the Main Prison who have tested positive for COVID-19 so far.
Each positive COVID-19 inmate is housed in housing areas with negative air pressure, Zick said, and “are monitored consistently by medical staff.”
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