Santa Barbara County has one of state's highest COVID-19 spread rates

While the state recently announced that residents 65 and older would be eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, public health officials say Santa Barbara County isn’t ready for that demographic yet. Meanwhile, the virus is spreading faster in the county than most other California jurisdictions.

click to enlarge Santa Barbara County has one of state's highest COVID-19 spread rates
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MORE DOSES : As of Jan. 20, Santa Barbara County is allowing those aged 75 and older to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

“The state does allow for local flexibility in the implementation, based upon infrastructure and vaccine availability,” Public Health Director Dr. Van Do-Reynoso said at a Jan. 15 press conference.

She said the county is ready to begin vaccinating people 75 and older beginning Jan. 20, but those aged 65 to 74 will have to wait a bit longer.

“We will begin vaccinating this group once enough vaccine supplies are available, and the community members will then hear from their health care providers as well as from our Public Health Department,” Do-Reynoso said.

Do-Reynoso said the county’s vaccine prioritization starts with health care workers who care directly for patients, many of whom have already been vaccinated. Then comes people aged 75 and older. Once more vaccines are available, 65 and older will also be prioritized, followed by workers in education, child care, emergency services, food, grocery, and agriculture. Do-Reynoso encouraged community members to visit the public health department’s website “for detailed information about these sectors and where you might fall.”

“We are hopeful that the vaccine will soon provide the path to normalcy,” Do-Reynoso said. “However, COVID-19 is still raging throughout our community.”

She illustrated the severity of the disease’s spread through a metric called the effective reproduction number, also known as R-effective. The metric tracks the number of people who can be infected by one individual case at a given time in a population. 

“The higher the value of R-effective, the faster more people become infected,” Do-Reynoso explained. 

As of Jan. 15, she said, “Santa Barbara County’s effective reproduction number is highest in the state. … In other words, the rate of COVID-19 spreading is higher in Santa Barbara County than any other jurisdiction in California.”

On Jan. 19, Santa Barbara County was nearly tied with Mono County and Lake County for the three highest R-effective numbers in the state, according to California Department of Public Health data

The county’s other metrics also continue to drastically worsen. Do-Reynoso said that COVID-19 hospitalizations and ICUs have increased fourfold since the holidays; the case rate and test positivity rates have doubled; weekly deaths have increased fourfold.

“So this is really a dire strait in our county,” Do-Reynoso said.

Sue Andersen, president and CEO of Marian Regional Medical Center, said at the press conference that the recent uptick led the hospital to enact its surge plan and utilize additional bed space that was previously prepared for this type of situation. The hospital converted space in its old hospital building into patient rooms, creating 48 more beds.

“We vaccinated our entire health care staff, everyone who wanted to get vaccinated, which was the majority of them, and most of them have had both [vaccine doses] now,” Andersen said. “It brought hope to our employees and physicians at a time when they needed it most.”

She added that Marian is working with the county and other area hospitals to vaccinate certain inpatients upon discharge, as well as beginning the effort to vaccinate those 75 and older. 

However, Public Health Officer Dr. Henning Ansorg added at the Jan. 15 press conference that the number of vaccine doses Santa Barbara County received so far from the state “is unfortunately much less than initially anticipated.”

“We are hopeful, however, that the vaccine production and the delivery will increase drastically over the next few weeks,” Ansorg continued. “So far, about 15,000 doses have been administered in Santa Barbara County.”

Ansorg said, “the vaccine seems to be tolerated quite well.” He added that the county is “preparing tirelessly” to vaccinate community members on a mass scale once sufficient vaccine doses become available. 

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