Edhat Staff
By edhat staff
A new COVID-19 Community Data Dashboard was unveiled during the County Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday morning.
The dashboard, developed with public and private partnerships and funded through philanthropic efforts, aims to provide augmented, comprehensive, and interactive information to the public. It builds upon the Public Health Department’s current website and showcases interactive data charts featuring testing, new cases, health care capacity by place, time period, and demography as well updated school status, employment, food distributions, homeless services, behavioral wellness, and flu outbreaks.
“In order to confront the COVID-19 crisis, Santa Barbara County residents and leaders need timely access to trustworthy data to make data-driven decisions. This public-private partnership brought together key agencies and organizations to meet this critical need by building an open and transparent collaborative data portal that builds upon everyone’s good work to date,” commented Supervisor Gregg Hart, Chair, Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors.
The dashboard, available on the Santa Barbara County Public Health website, is the result of a robust public-private partnership facilitated by LegacyWorks with a wide array of community organizations and agencies, guided by a steering committee made up of public health experts and community leaders. The steering committee’s work is informed by a larger advisory group with broad expertise and perspective.
“The dashboard was created with a long-term view in mind,” explained Carl Palmer of LegacyWorks Group. “It serves as a tool to actively engage the community in reducing the spread of COVID-19, while at the same time creating a shared platform where we can collectively monitor the evolving nature of the pandemic and its effects on our communities.”
Some of the other development partners include the Family Service Agence, Cottage Health, Santa Barbara Foundation, UCSB Economic Forecast Project, Cal Poly Department of Social Service, Foodbank of Santa Barbara County, County Education Office, and other county departments including housing, public health, and behavioral wellness.
Dr. Lynn Fitzgibbons, the infectious disease specialist at Cottage Hospital, stated the dashboard is going to be incredibly empowering for schools, businesses, doctor, and any other community member who needs a real-time look at COVID-19 data. She also stated that while the county’s data is stable, changes are afoot based on the virus trends throughout the world, nation, and even as close as Los Angeles County.
The dashboard can be viewed here and an instructional video is provided below.
COVID-19 Number Update
Santa Barbara County Public Health Director Van Do-Reynoso provided the Board of Supervisors with an update on COVID-19 numbers within the county.
As of Monday, the county has a total of 10,230 cases with 164 currently active. Of those there are 12 hospitalizations including three in the intensive care unit. There has been a total of 131 deaths.
From October 26 through November 9, the county saw a 39% increase in active cases, said Do-Reynoso.
The seven-day rolling sum of new cases by area from October 19 through November 2 showed that Isla Vista had a 68% decrease in new COVID-19 cases, while the City of Santa Barbara had a 183% increase starting at 12 cases and jumping to 34.
Worldwide the virus is spreading more rapidly than at any other point with the United States and Europe setting records for new cases while South America, North Africa, and India are coping with serious outbreaks, said Do-Reynoso.
Santa Barbara County remains in the red “substantial” tier with the adjusted case rate being 4.3, not quite enough to reach the 3.9 or lower threshold for the less restrictive orange “moderate” tier.
While the case rates continue to increase, Do-Reynoso suggested the county’s hospitalizations have remained stable due to a good portion of new cases being within the young crowd and a stable landscape with regards to outbreaks in skilled nursing facilities.
More data can be viewed here: https://publichealthsbc.org.
