The Santa Barbara County Public Health Department plans to issue a new health officer order on Wednesday mandating universal masking indoors for everyone, regardless of vaccination status, as the spread of the Delta variant causes an uptick in COVID-19 cases across the county.
The health order will go into effect on Friday.
Public Health does not plan to send out additional information about the order until it is finalized and posted, but Santa Barbara County’s RISE program alerted members of the business community on Tuesday, including the Santa Barbara South Coast Chamber of Commerce, before any notice was given to the general public.
“As is customary, our Public Health leaders briefed key stakeholders of the upcoming change before notifying the general public and news media,” Public Health spokeswoman Jackie Ruiz said in an email Tuesday when asked about the lack of notice.
The county and state public health departments, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have already recommended everyone wear masks indoors in public due to the surge in novel coronavirus cases.
Los Angeles County mandated universal indoor masking in public weeks ago, and several other counties recently did the same, including several in the Bay Area.
Capacity restrictions, physical distancing and other public health measures from the state’s reopening tier system are not expected to return.
Public Health Director Van Do-Reynoso said last week that the county would likely consider an indoor mask mandate if the number of weekly local cases continued to rise, which it has.
“If our numbers increase and we find ourselves next week in what used to be the deep purple (tier), more than 46 cases a day on a consistent level, we would consider a mask mandate for indoors,” she said at a July 27 COVID-19 briefing.
“When we get into the purple tier, I think that we would consider advisories such as masking indoors, avoiding crowds, distancing, hand washing, everything that we know has worked in the last 16 months,” she said. “But what has worked best, again, is vaccination, so we don’t want to let go of that focus.”
Dr. Henning Ansorg, the public health officer, said on July 13 that he would be “nervous” if the daily case rate reached 4 per 100,000 people, and at 6 the county would reconsider reinstating certain mandates, or recommendations.
As of Friday, the county’s case rate is 12.4 per 100,000 people, or an average of 55.8 daily new cases of the novel coronavirus.
The indoor mask mandate is expected to be similar to previous ones, which require face coverings be worn indoors, in public places, by everyone 2 years old and older.
In advance of the new health officer order, UC Santa Barbara announced on Tuesday that all faculty, staff, students, and visitors will be required to wear masks indoors on campus, regardless of vaccination status, effective immediately.
“Given the sudden uptick in cases, and to help reduce the spread of COVID-19 on our campus and in our community, effective immediately, we are now requiring all faculty, staff, students, and visitors to wear masks in shared indoor spaces,” Chancellor Henry Yang said in a statement on Tuesday.
Santa Barbara City College and Allan Hancock College also have indoor mask mandates in place.
Tuesday’s COVID-19 Numbers
Public Health officials reported 52 new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, and one additional COVID-19-related death.
The person who died lived in the city of Santa Maria, and no further details were available. There have been five COVID-19-related deaths reported over the past two weeks, and the county’s cumulative death toll rose to 464.
There have been 534 new cases reported in Santa Barbara County over the last seven days, averaging just over 76 new cases per day, according to data tracking done by Noozhawk.
The number of patients hospitalized dropped to 31 on Tuesday from 33 the previous day, but the number of COVID patients recovering in intensive-care units increased to five.
There were 430 cases still considered to be infectious countywide on Tuesday.
Of Tuesday’s new cases, 21 were from the Santa Maria Valley and 12 were from Santa Barbara. The Lompoc Valley reported eight cases, the Goleta Valley tallied five, the Santa Ynez Valley added three, and the Montecito-Summerland-Carpinteria area logged one. There were two cases still pending geographic location.
There have been 36,004 confirmed cases countywide since the pandemic began last March.
As of Monday, 52.6% of the county’s entire population was fully vaccinated against the novel virus, and about 62% of the county’s eligible population (those 12 and older) was fully vaccinated, according to the county’s Community Data Dashboard.
Vaccines remain widely available throughout the county.
Noozhawk managing editor Giana Magnoli contributed reporting to this story.
— 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.
