The federal government and U.S. Postal Service are again offering free COVID-19 test kits for every household, as the community continues to see an increase in virus transmission and the winter holidays quickly approach.
Each U.S. household is eligible to receive one set of four free at-home COVID-19 tests to be delivered by USPS, and orders can be placed online at covid.gov/tests or usps.com/testkits.
The orders will be shipped for free starting next week.
For the week ending Thursday, the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department said that the weekly average of reported PCR-confirmed COVID-19 cases increased 8.3% over the previous seven days, and two related deaths occurred during the past week.
Santa Barbara County remains in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s low COVID-19 community level, which is determined by the case rate per 100,000 population, new COVID-19 admissions per 100,000 population, and the percent of staffed inpatient beds in use by patients with confirmed COVID-19.
For the week ending Dec. 6, the county reported a seven-day average of 69.57 cases and a seven-day test positivity rate of 10%.
According to the county’s data dashboard, there were 40 COVID-19-positive people hospitalized throughout the county on Thursday, with eight of those patients being treated in intensive-care units.
Since the pandemic began in early 2020, Santa Barbara County Public Health officials have reported a total of 108,635 COVID-19 cases and 743 related deaths, while county providers have administered a total of 941,032 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine as of Friday.