With COVID-19 cases continuing to go down, Santa Barbara County is now at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s low COVID-19 community levels, and the weekly average of reported cases has decreased 7.3%, the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department said Friday.
According to the county’s data dashboard, there were no coronavirus-related deaths in the past week and, as of Thursday, there were 34 COVID-19-positive individuals hospitalized throughout the county, six of whom were being treated in local intensive-care units.
The Lompoc Valley Medical Center announced Thursday that its weekly COVID-19 vaccine clinic is temporarily canceled because of the Food and Drug Administration’s removal of authorization for the current monovalent COVID-19 vaccine as a booster dose.
“The bivalent vaccines, which we will also refer to as ‘updated boosters,’ contain two messenger RNA (mRNA) components of SARS-CoV-2 virus, one of the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 and the other one in common between the BA.4 and BA.5 lineages of the omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2,” the FDA said. “The monovalent COVID-19 vaccines that are authorized or approved by the FDA and have been administered to millions of people in the United States since December 2020 contain a component from the original strain of SARS-CoV-2.”
The bivalent vaccines, which are intended to provide more protection against the omicron variant of COVID-19, are now authorized as booster doses for individuals age 12 or older, while the previous monovalent vaccines are authorized only for primary doses.
“LVMC will resume its public COVID-19 vaccination clinic when the proposed new bivalent vaccine is available and approved by the appropriate agencies,” the Lompoc Valley Medical Center said in a press release. “This is expected to occur by mid-September.”
The CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices also recommended the use of bivalent vaccines as booster doses Thursday and, in order to be administered locally, the bivalent vaccines still need to be reviewed and approved by the Western States Scientific Safety Review Workgroup.
Since the pandemic began in early 2020, the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department has reported 104,161 COVID-19 cases and 716 confirmed related deaths.
— Noozhawk staff writer Serena Guentz can be reached at sguentz@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.