Santa Barbara County officially advanced to the less-restrictive red tier on Tuesday, with new guidelines that will go into effect on Wednesday morning, Public Health Director Van Do-Reynoso shared at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting.
After nearly seven weeks in the most-restrictive purple tier of the state’s tiered reopening framework, board members applauded as Do-Reynoso shared the news of the county’s advancement.
The new tier placement came after Friday’s announcement that the state met its first vaccine equity goal of distributing 2 million vaccines to the 400 zip codes in the vaccine equity quartile, widening the criteria for the red tier.
“Because of this broadening of the framework, we’re able to make it into the red tier,” Do-Reynoso said.
With Santa Barbara County reporting a 7.7 adjusted daily case rate in the latest tier assignment, the county has met the new criteria for the red tier for two consecutive weeks, officially allowing it to advance to the less-restrictive tier.
The red tier comes with new opportunities for businesses and entertainment venues to further open their doors to the community.
Under the red tier, retail and shopping centers may open indoors at 50% capacity, and restaurants can offer indoor dining at 25% capacity or 100 people, whichever is fewer, according to assistant county executive officer Nancy Anderson.
Zoos and aquariums may open indoors at 25% capacity, and movie theaters can now open indoors at 25% capacity or 100 people, whichever is fewer, Anderson said.
Places of worship are free to open indoors at 25% capacity, and gyms and fitness centers may also open indoors at 10% capacity.
Beginning March 13, wineries, breweries, and distilleries were able to operate outdoors without the purchase of food, with reservations required and a 90-minute time limit per party.
Wineries, breweries, and distilleries that do serve food will be able to operate indoors at 25% capacity as well.
All schools serving transitional kindergarten through 12th grade will be allowed to reopen without submitting a waiver application as long a safety plan is posted on the school’s website five days prior to reopening, Do-Reynoso said.
Additionally, beginning April 1, counties in the red tier will be able to hold sports and live performances at 20% capacity to in-state visitors with reservations only, according to Anderson.
Also effective April 1, amusement parks can open under the red tier at a maximum 15% capacity with small groups of 10 or less. Overnight sleep-away camps will be allowed on June 1 with modifications, Anderson said.
A health officer order will be issued Tuesday night with the new guidance, and will go into effect Wednesday morning, Do-Reynoso said.
While advancing to the red tier brings exciting reopening opportunities to community members, Do-Reynoso said that it is critical to continue following public health and safety precautions to keep up the county’s momentum and ensure that another surge does not occur.
“This is indeed good news, we definitely can celebrate experiencing these downward trends,” Do-Reynoso said. “But, I really want to stress that we have to stay vigilant collectively as a county so that we can continue to see a decline in case rates and other metrics.”
“We just need to set our focus on moving towards the orange tier. We can get there if we continue with all of our safety precautions.”
The next goal the state set for the vaccine equity metric is to distribute 4 million doses to the most hard-hit communities, and when that goal is met further adjustments to the tier system will be made, Do-Reynoso said.
Last week, the county received 9,080 first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, and Do-Reynoso said that she expects next week’s allocation to be similar.
In addition to the 9,080 first doses, the Public Health Department was able to reallocate some second doses to the Lompoc Valley Medical Center to be used as first doses, Do-Reynoso said.
In total, 11,420 first doses were distributed to community vaccine providers this week.
The state’s vaccine equity metric requires counties to set aside 40% of allocated vaccines to distribute among the healthy place index quartile one communities. Santa Barbara County has three zip codes in this quartile: including 93254 in Cuyama, 93434 in Guadalupe, and 93458 in Santa Maria, according to Do-Reynoso.
This week, Public Health is focusing on vaccinating community members in the agricultural sector. With 400 doses going to Allan Hancock College specifically for agricultural workers, and 2,340 going to Marian Regional Medical Center for the same purpose, 24% of this week’s vaccine allocation will be used specifically for the agricultural sector.
Cottage Hospital, Sansum Clinics, and various pharmacies are also offering vaccines to this sector, Do-Reynoso noted.
As of March 13, just over 128,000 vaccine doses have been delivered into the arms of the community, and 9.6% of the county’s population is fully vaccinated, according to the county’s Community Data Dashboard.
TIER STATUS AND DAILY NUMBERS
Following Tuesday’s tier assignment, Santa Barbara County is reporting a 7.7 adjusted daily case rate, a 3.3% positivity rate, and a 5.1% health equity testing positivity rate.
The adjusted case rate allowed the county to advance to the red tier, and the testing positivity rate currently meets the criteria for the moderate orange tier.
The testing positivity rate and the adjusted case rate both declined from the previous reporting period, according to Do-Reynoso.
Santa Barbara County experienced a downward trend in active cases, hospitalizations, and intensive-care unit admissions over the last two weeks, Do-Reynoso said.
“I want to acknowledge that the winter surge in cases is now over,” she continued. “We’re seeing that our active cases, our daily new cases, our testing positivity, our case rate, hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and deaths have all decreased substantially.”
The seven-day rolling sum of new cases by area shows decreases in all areas of the county from Feb. 25 to March 11, with the exception of the unincorporated areas of North County. Public Health has created a team to analyze why cases in that region have not declined, Do-Reynoso said.
Public Health officials reported 35 new cases of COVID-19 and one additional fatality on Tuesday.
The person who died was between the ages of 50 and 69, had underlying health conditions, and resided in the city of Lompoc.
The county’s COVID-19 death toll rose to 430.
There were 40 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 throughout the county, including 15 in intensive-care units. As of Tuesday, county hospital intensive care units were operating at 39.5% availability, according to Public Health.
There were 182 cases still considered to be infectious throughout the county, and there have been 32,669 confirmed cases since the pandemic began.
Of Tuesday’s new cases, 10 were from Santa Barbara and nine were from Santa Maria. The Montecito-Summerland-Carpinteria area, Goleta, Isla Vista, the unincorporated area of the Goleta Valley and Gaviota, and Lompoc each reported two new cases. There were six cases currently pending geographic location.
There were no new cases reported in the Santa Ynez Valley, the Lompoc Federal Prison, Orcutt, or the unincorporated areas of North County.
— Noozhawk staff writer Jade Martinez-Pogue can be reached at jmartinez-pogue@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
