Edhat Staff
By edhat staff
Health officials warn the surge of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations are expected to continue through the end of January.
Ron Werft, President/CEO of Cottage Health System, stated “this is far from over” during Friday’s press conference.
While hospital beds, personal protective equipment (PPE), and ventilators are in good supply, hospitals are most concerned about critical care staffing. The ability to identify, recruit, and expand staffing is very challenging for every hospital in the country, Werft said.
Cottage Health’s surge plans are underway but there’s a “limit to what we will be able to do,” he said.
The Public Health Department announced the COVID-19 data for Friday is delayed due to an issue with the state’s CalREDIE reporting system but Director Van Do-Reynoso was able to provide an update based on the past two weeks.
Santa Barbara County is seeing a 10-fold increase between Thanksgiving and the New Year, which is directly connected to gatherings and travel around the holidays, she said.
The data is “literally off the charts,” said Do-Reynoso confirming they have had to adjust their graph displays to accommodate the surge in numbers. From December 27 through January 2, COVID-19 cases increased by 53%, active cases increased by 19%. “Testing positivity soared to 17% so that’s approximately one positive for every sixteen test results,” she said.
Additionally, there have been eight outbreaks in congregate care settings and six outbreaks in business settings: two in administrative offices, one in skilled labor, one in a grocery store, and one in retail.
Werft stated Cottage Health is receiving two to four patient transfer requests every 24 hours as many hospitals have hit the wall at zero available intensive care unit (ICU) beds.
Federal laws govern how hospitals manage transfers where each one is reviewed based on the hospital’s capacity, a higher level of care, and confirmation the requesting hospital has exhausted every possible solution between them and Santa Barbara. Werft confirmed Cottage Health will not compromise its ability to provide care for the local community when accepting a transfer.
The Public Health Department has received 16,775 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to date and recently ordered 4,900 doses with an additional 7,200 doses to be requested next week. The Department hopes to vaccinate 5,000 people this month.
Beginning Monday, a mobile COVID-19 testing unit will be available to support the expansion of testing throughout the county. The mobile testing unit will be located at CenCal Health in Santa Barbara (4050 Calle Real) from 9:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. This test site will be available from 7 a.m. – 7 p.m. Monday – Friday thereafter for a minimum of two (2) weeks and available to all community members.
The mobile testing unit will then move to a new location which will be announced. To request an appointment, please go online to https://lhi.care/covidtesting. If you need assistance registering, call 2-1-1.
In addition to the new mobile testing site, expanded COVID-19 testing is also available in the Santa Maria and Isla Vista communities.
More information can be found at https://publichealthsbc.org/
They can and will vaccinate more in the immediate future. The delay is the fault of the current federal leadership. Using the mobilization laws available there is no reason why FEMA, the National Guard and other enterprises cannot be brought on line to deal with this just as we do with natural disasters. The present disaster is completely the result of dereliction or incompetence at the highest level.
Distribution within the state is up to the state. Newsom should have mobilized the national guard months ago to aid with testing, medical care and vaccine distribution, all of which we knew would be needed.
Hi Shasta, how have you been? I missed your update from your trip earlier this year. Hope you had a great time. Eye protection that wraps around is better than a full face shield, Something like lab goggles. Unless the shield is sealed around the periphery the eddies as you walk though the store will create vortexes that may pull air inside the face shield. Just saying.
Stop complaining about the federal government. Does the concept of personal responsibility totally escape you? The present disaster is due to individuals who chose to act irresponsibly. With respect to vaccines, the federal government helped to speed that along as best they could, and we got several vaccines in record time. The simple truth is that few at our state, county and city level started planning for distribution of the vaccines, which is why CA ranks 48th in distribution. You can’t blame the federal government for that one.
Actually, they can. I have friends who were super careful and never went out EXCEPT to the grocery store, and they still got COVID.
“One positive for every 16 people tested”… isn’t that 6%? Wouldn’t a 17% positivity rate be 1 in 6? Or is this measured differently?
One individual in particular, who claimed he wasn’t responsible for anything.
I love all this “personal responsibility” rhetoric from people who don’t understand the purpose of civilization.
It’s always funny when people think they know where they got covid from.
@Townie, kids in my town have been back in elementary and middle school for about three months now, nary an outbreak and no resclosures. If all of their parents and household members would really follow the lockdown and skip the trips to Target and BBQs with extended families, we wouldn’t have to worry at all about kids being in school. I’m fully with VOR on this one – our kids should be our top priority. They have suffered more than any other population during this whole mess.
SeaBird, with all due respect, I think you are suffering from parental myopia if you think children have suffered the worst from COVID. I agree with you that children have suffered – like everyone else – but to say they, who are naturally practically immune to the worst effects, have suffered worst? Would you really say that to the tens of thousands of seniors who died scared and alone from this? I sincerely insist you rethink your stance. Children’s learning may have suffered, but children themselves are not truly suffering in the way many other vulnerable groups are. Putting their needs above others’ safety is also rationally indefensible. Schools spread COVID. You will see once the new variant gets to our area. I will be vindicated and the schools will be closed once again.
What have these local health authorities been doing for the last year? Sitting on their asses? I give the Trump administration a failing grade, but the vaccines have been delivered to California, and most of them, from what I understand, are sitting in storage, while people bicker over which group should go first. It’s pathetic. I blame the local health authorities, too, for failing to have a plan in place to get the vaccine administered swiftly and efficiently.
Bravo ! LOOSECANNON gets it.
6:03 pm –
Superspreading misinformation.
The provisions arranged by the federal government for supply of ancillary items for vaccination were woefully inadequate. As an example, instead of contracting with Becton-Dickinson for a huge increase in hypodermic syringe production, the contract was split, and a large order given to a company with ties to trump, even though they had never manufactured syringes.
No… but many/most kids aren’t just sitting at home… they are at park, beach, friends, cousins house etc… so yeah… full lock down is safest… but in practice where and how we look… kids in school and being monitored IS safer. Think about it SBTOWNIe… logically… and what’s actually happening. In a vacuum, your right… in the world though… school is safer! Which is why Germany and most European countries prioritized schools being open as the best/safest option
In case you hadn’t noticed, our local medical people who have the freezers needed for the vaccine are pretty busy taking care of pandemic patients. Should we pull the nurses from the ICUs to give people shots? Each patient has to fill out paperwork, I’m thinking 5-10 mins/shot at best, 6-12/hr, 100/day/nurse. This gives you an idea of the logistical nightmare of vaccinating the 240,000,000 people that want the vaccine.
ICU nurses aren’t needed to monitor the vaccine shot… that’s obviously (once again) a massive Pitmix exaggeration!!!!
Thanks, VOR. You’re right it has not been mentioned much. I was able to find a one sentence reference in a New Yorker article to the government granting corning $200million back in June to make vials. Thank you for the information. I genuinely appreciate it. I am interested above all in facts, not feelings or politics.
CSF: I’ve been managing like everyone else. People have gone COVID crazy here, so I have decided to pull pack a bit. No need jump into the anti maskers are terrorists vs masks are ineffective PPE fray. It’s a waste of time to me and no one is going to change anyone’s opinion.
With virus cases really ramping up now, and due an experience of a family member, I will be wearing a face shield at the store. The cough or sneeze someone does in a store now could be their first COVID symptom, and I want to minimize the probability of aerosol droplets with virus getting to my eyes. More people are among us who do not know they are infected, and they are coughing and sneezing among us. Call me paranoid, but I do microscopic particle control in clean room manufacturing and I’ve decided to up my PPE because masks do not protect your eyes.
For those who’ve commented, it’s the “state’s responsibility” for vaccine distribution in one of the worst natural disaster in U.S. history with over 360,000 dead and projected 500,000 deaths by June, should states now take over all disaster relief for massive fires, floods and tornados? Why should the feds not help the states try to protect the population from this natural disaster? The only answer goes back to the leadership at the top who’ve dumped the whole mess in the lap of state government from day one and then blamed the states when they struggled for resources. Enough of the blame game, let’s work together as Americans, wear masks to prevent the spread, roll up our sleeves (literally), get the population vaccinated, and get us back to work and school.
Possibly… but we still completely screwed up the entire fall… which included a lot of idiotic posts on edhat about keeping schools closed while private schools did 3.5 months of COVID spread free class work! So yeah… are numbers are up… but a lot of edhat and SB school board idiots closed us down for absolutely no reason… except of course to make everyone’s life worse (not to mention harm every single public school kid)… so… thanks anonymous edhat poster for being part of making our town worse !!!!!
Comments like this are what concern me about our future. Too many voters have no idea how our country and states work yet are allowed to vote. This leaves them susceptible to misinformation like how it’s so easy to blame whose in the White House for all our problems regardless of whether or not it was in the presidents power to control. The biggest problem with this is people will vote for a president thinking that will solve all their problems when really the problems are wide spread through the many layers of federal and state governments. Plus, please read a history book.
giftedinSB – Yes. You are correct. I noticed that too and thought “How can we trust these information releases when they often contain obvious errors. Maybe they are tired from overwork but someone needs to check and verify the facts before release.
Strange that someone would down vote your comment.
This isn’t the first time ignorant republicans effed up vaccine distribution….
As David M. Oshinsky notes in his book “Polio: An American Story,” although Eisenhower was a political moderate, his secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Oveta Culp Hobby, was a fierce conservative from Texas. To her way of thinking, federal involvement in a polio vaccine was a step toward “socialized medicine……Thus, even after it became clear that the Salk vaccine was likely to be effective, Hobby made no distribution plans; indeed, the day after the April 12 announcement, she appeared before a congressional committee and said flatly that the federal government should not be involved. Oshinsky wrote: Neither the president nor his advisors viewed the distribution of polio vaccine as a legitimate governmment should not be involved. Oshinsky wrote: Neither the president nor his advisors viewed the distribution of polio vaccine as a legitimate government function. At a time when the very hint of federal intervention raised angry cries of “socialized medicine,” they fully expected the process to remain in private hands, with the vaccine going from the manufacturer to the wholesaler to the druggist to the local doctor, who would inoculate the child three times in three paid office visits. As one administration official put it, “an allocation program for the Salk vaccine would constitute an undesirable precedent.” The result was nothing short of a crisis. People had been led to expect that millions of doses would be available on Day One. They weren’t. Instead, there were shortages. The companies manufacturing the vaccine more than doubled the price they had been paid by the foundation just months earlier, raising accusations of price-gouging. As it became clear that summer was going to arrive with few children vaccinated, parents were up in arms.
For the first time, I am truly concerned. I strongly feel the new variant is not being taken seriously here for some reason (meaning in the US in general). Things are about to get catastrophic. I’ve anecdotally seen almost no change in behavior from neighbors, etc. since the partial lockdown. My street is inundated with screaming, maskless children who soon will be going back into classrooms part time. I checked the SBUSD website and it seems they are still planning on holding in-person classes for kids several days a week? They need to do better research. Children and schools are huge vectors for this disease, and sitting them 6 feet apart for hours on end is not the solution. It’s proven that opening schools in the UK contributed to huge spread of the virus, which is why they had to shut them down given the grip the new mutation has on the country. For anyone who doesn’t believe me, I am happy to give you the data to back this up. I am honestly very worried. Switching all of our shopping to curbside only given the infectiousness of the new variant which if not here yet, will be here soon. This is not the time to be relaxed. We had a relatively easy summer and early fall. Now we need to be vigilant again. Too bad we blew our real lockdown on last spring, when we had almost no virus but were flying blind and so went into excessively cautious overdrive mode. We could really use it NOW. We squandered it back then.
Oh, you mean the same CDC that said masks do nothing and none of us should wear them? Schools spread every other disease on earth. Explain to me the magical ability of COVID to be stopped dead in its tracks in schools. You’re telling me indoor rooms of messy kids don’t spread disease? Come on. A school is safer than a child being in his or her home? You can do better than that.