The federal government is mailing out more free COVID-19 test kits, starting next week, and households can place their orders online now.
Every residential address can order four tests (or eight if you haven’t ordered any since late September) at https://www.covid.gov/tests.
Santa Barbara County, and the rest of the country, typically sees an increase in respiratory viruses, including COVID-19 cases, during the winter months.
The region currently has a low level of virus transmission, according to Public Health data, which you can view for the county here and statewide here.
There have been 831 COVID-19-related deaths of Santa Barbara County residents and 104,705 deaths of California residents since the pandemic started.
Vaccination Rates
Updated COVID-19 vaccinations became available this fall to “more closely target currently circulating variants,” and provide better protection against hospitalization and death, according to the FDA.
Public health agencies have changed how they talk about vaccination rates: people are considered “up to date” if they’ve had all the recommended shots, which includes booster shots and/or updated shots.
The “fully vaccinated” term they used before meant that people had received the primary series of a COVID-19 vaccine.
About 70% of county residents had their primary series of shots, but only 6.5% of people are “up to date” as of November, according to public health. California overall reports a 6.7% “up to date” vaccination rate.
The rates are higher for older people, which is good, since age is one of the risk factors for serious illness from COVID. In Santa Barbara County, 23% of local residents 65 and older are “up to date” on the vaccinations.
How to Get Vaccinated
Many pharmacies and medical offices have the updated COVID-19 vaccines available.
You can search for providers at https://www.vaccines.gov/search/. It lets you search by geographic area, by vaccine manufacturer, and by age group.
Click here to read recommendations on “staying up to date” on COVID-19 vaccination from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They're summarized as:
- CDC recommends the 2023–2024 updated COVID-19 vaccines: Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, or Novavax, to protect against serious illness from COVID-19.
- Everyone ages 5 years and older should get 1 dose of an updated COVID-19 vaccine to protect against serious illness from COVID-19.
- Children ages 6 months–4 years need multiple doses of COVID-19 vaccines to be up to date, including at least 1 dose of updated COVID-19 vaccine.
- People who are moderately or severely immunocompromised may get additional doses of updated COVID-19 vaccine.