Edhat StaffBy edhat staff
The Santa Barbara County Public Health Department (PHD) reported an additional 184 COVID-19 cases on Tuesday raising the active case count to 371.
The total number of cases is not 4,323 with 76 hospitalizations including 22 in the intensive care unit (ICU).
The County’s Health Officer, Dr. Henning Ansorg, officially issued a new health order to comply with the Governor’s latest round of closures that include indoor business operations. This includes gyms, offices, hair salons, and places of worship.
This new health order also eliminates the expiration date that was initially set for July 26th. The order can be found here.
During Tuesday morning’s County Board of Supervisor’s meeting, PHD Director Dr. Van Do-Reynoso confirmed the county’s COVID-19 cases have increased by 43% in the past two weeks. However, approximately 8% of the total cases are active and last week there was a downward tapering of active cases, she said.
Santa Barbara County has been on the state’s monitoring list for 29 consecutive days as benchmarks have not been met in two categories.
Within the county, there are 34% of all medical/surgical hospital beds, 38% of ICU beds, and 80% of all ventilators available. The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) is concerned that only 40% of personal protective gear (PPE) is available. However, Do-Reynoso believes this may be an error in reporting and PHD is working to connect with one hospital to verify the data.
For elevated disease transmission, the state becomes concerned if the case rate is higher than 25 per 100,000 residents, currently Santa Barbara County has 242 exceeding state rate by almost ten times. Additionally, the COVID-19 positive testing rate is outpacing the state’s average reaching 9.7% where the cutoff is 8%.
Dr. Do-Reynoso confirmed she anticipates further modifications from Governor Newsom as he’s looking broadly at the state and making modifications in a rapid fashion to affect significant change.
More data can be found at
A Shelter in Place Order is Coming!
It looks like the genie is out of the bottle in Santa Maria. Everyone needs to remain vigilant. I’m off to Mount Shasta for two weeks starting Saturday, and it can’t come soon enough. All of Siskiyou county has had only a total of 37 cases since February so it will seem like a virus free paradise.