Santa Barbara County added one more COVID-19 death and 110 new cases on Friday, which is the highest daily number reported since early April 2021.
On April 10, the county reported 110 COVID-19 cases, according to data tracking done by Noozhawk.
The fatality was a person in the 30-49 age group who had underlying medical conditions, according to the county Public Health Department.
The latest COVID-19 death raises the county’s total to 465.
The county has reported a total of 36,308 confirmed coronavirus cases since the beginning of the pandemic locally in March 2020.
There were 507 active cases throughout the community on Friday, a number last seen on Feb. 20, when the county reported 512 active cases.
There have been more than 470 COVID-19 cases since Aug. 1 in the county.
For the first six days in August last year, the county reported more than 500 COVID-19 cases.
There were 29 COVID-19 patients in local hospitals on Friday, compared with 34 on both Thursday and the previous day, according to the county Public Health Department.
Four of those patients were being treated in intensive-care units, a number that was unchanged from Thursday.
Of Friday’s new positive cases, Santa Maria had 27, Santa Barbara had 18, and both Orcutt and the Lompoc Valley had 15.
Elsewhere, the Santa Ynez Valley reported nine, Goleta had eight, the North County unincorporated areas and Isla Vista each had four, and the Montecito-Summerland-Carpinteria area had three.
Two new cases were reported in the unincorporated Goleta Valley, and geographic locations were pending on five cases.
The county’s testing positivity rate stood at 6.4% and a positive case rate of slightly more than 12 per 100,000 residents as of Aug. 2.
The county’s Community Data Dashboard shows increases in daily COVID-19 positive case rate among both vaccinated and unvaccinated residents.
Data available to the public online is lagging amid an evolving virus.
There is no data published for August so far.
On July 30, there were 19.1 new cases per 100,000 people among unvaccinated, while the daily case rate among vaccinated residents was 5.6 per 100,000 people.
The case rate among vaccinated residents hovered between 0.2 and 0.4 for the entire month of June, and began to rise in July, according to the dashboard.
Nearly 71% of county residents ages 12 and older are fully vaccinated for COVID-19, according to the latest figures from the county Public Health Department.
Santa Barbara County is calling back extra people for coronavirus contact tracing.
Public Health asks people who test positive to participate in the public health contact tracing interview.
“We’re redirecting Public Health Department staff to our contact tracing team, and we reached out to county departments who have sent us staff previously during the winter surge,” county Public Health Director Van Do-Reynoso said Thursday. “We already reached out and they are sending staff to us.”
The county also asked the state for additional people to help with these investigations, where patients who recently tested positive are contacted and given instructions and resources, and asked about possible exposures to other people.
“We do have an overwhelming number of cases that we need to process, unfortunately,” she said. “We shouldn’t be here, but here we are, so we are scrambling, and we will get the team to do the work.”
With the additional county staff members helping, “we will be working day and night through the weekend, and we will be caught up by Monday,” she added.
People who test positive should not wait to be told to isolate at home, and are encouraged to inform people they’ve had close contact with. Do not leave your home, except to get medical care, according to public health.
The county Public Health Department is not providing updates on COVID-19 cases or virus-related deaths on weekends, according to the Community Data Dashboard website.
Find a COVID-19 vaccine provider near you on the county website, publichealthsbc.org/vaccine, or at myturn.ca.gov. Some facilities offer walk-ups as well as appointments.
Click here for Noozhawk’s complete Coronavirus Crisis coverage.
Managing editor Giana Magnoli contributed reporting to this story.
— Noozhawk staff writer Brooke Holland can be reached at bholland@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
