Community levels for COVID-19 remain low in Santa Barbara County, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.
There were 380 new cases reported in the week ending Wednesday. There also was one reported death, according to the Santa Barbara County Community Dashboard Data.
The number of new cases doesn’t include at-home rapid-antigen tests. It’s a 15.9% decrease in cases compared with last week.
There were 37 coronavirus-positive patients hospitalized in the county within the past week, with seven of the patients in intensive-care units.
The test positivity rate — the number of people out of 100 who have positive test results in the county — is 8.5%. It’s a 1.3% decrease from the previous week.
On Friday, the Lompoc Valley Medical Center held a COVID-19 vaccination clinic. It was postponed Sept. 1 to end the use of the monovalent booster shot.
The bivalent boosters also have been rolled out in pharmacies in the county, such as Vons and Sav-on.
At this time, the bivalent vaccine is approved only as a booster. Any adult starting a COVID-19 vaccination schedule will receive the original, monovalent COVID-19 vaccine for the initial two shots, according to Nora Wallace, a public aelations coordinator for the Lompoc Valley Medical Center.
The Food and Drug Administration has approved an emergency use authorization of the updated, bivalent COVID-19 booster to combat the Omicron sub-variants BA.4 and BA.5.
The Moderna doses are acceptable for those age 18 or older. The Pfizer doses are available for those age 12 or older.
The BA.4 and BA.5 lineages of the Omicron variant are causing most of the new cases of COVID-19 in the United States and are expected to circulate in the upcoming fall and winter.
— Noozhawk staff writer Grace Kitayama can be reached at gkitayama@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.