Of the 26 known coronavirus cases in Santa Barbara County, only one person has been hospitalized, the county Public Health Department reported Wednesday.
County officials for the first time also announced a breakdown of places where the people who contracted the virus live.
Five of them are in Orcutt, six are in the city of Santa Maria, 10 are in the city of Santa Barbara and five are in areas of Carpinteria, Montecito and Summerland, which is classified as “other South County.”
The county released the locations for people who live in communities of 20,000 or more, with smaller areas grouped together.
“We know that 19 are recovering at home,” said Van Do-Reynoso, director of the Public Health Department. “One is hospitalized and six are fully recovered.”
The release of information regarding numbers of hospitalization and cities where people have contracted the virus comes at a time of increasing concern among members of the public, who want to know the location of people who have tested positive.
Medical privacy laws prevent the release of specific individual information.
Dr. Stewart W. Comer, lab director for the Public Health Department, said the infectivity level of the coronavirus is high, but that doesn’t necessarily mean hospitalization.
“The actual virulence of this particular novel virus is not as bad as we think,” Comer said.
Comer said the community has been “blessed” not to have a large hospitalization rate, but health officials are still preparing for the worst.
“All of your hospitals here in the county are working on that planning right now, with all of their senior staff, as well as the directors, to find that capacity should that change,” Comer said. “But right now, that has been a significant blessing.”
One reason the county is experiencing lower hospitalization rates than some other larger city is because of the early social distancing efforts, Comer said.
“I think Santa Barbara has done an excellent job early on in engaging in social distancing,” Comer said. “If you listen to the people in New York City, they really didn’t engage that as effectively.”
Comer said the virus can be transmitted quickly when you have very large groups of people who don’t practice social distancing.
“This is why we have gone to extraordinary steps to engage in what we are doing now, to make sure that we try to prevent that portion of the curve from accelerating,” Comer said.
Comer also said the capacity for testing is growing, particularly with another lab in Phoenix that opened recently.
Tuesday, members of the Santa Barbara County Fire Department were in contact with someone who has since been tested for COVID-19.
Firefighters and first responders assisted the woman, and she was transported to the hospital.
At the hospital, the patient’s symptoms began to evolve and become in line with those of COVID-19, said fire Capt. Daniel Bertucelli.
All the first responders were notified and immediately put into quarantine.
The patient has been tested for COVID-19, and officials are awaiting results, which might take 48 hours. The county’s firefighters have not been tested.
If patient’s results come back as positive, they will be tested.
— Noozhawk staff writer Joshua Molina can be reached at jmolina@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
