County Public Health Updates to COVID-19 Guidance

March 14, 2023, 10:07 am 19.1k Views 130 Comments

By the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department

The Santa Barbara County Public Health Department is following the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) updated guidance for residents. With the end to California’s COVID-19 state of emergency, state health officials have announced updates to several pandemic-era public health orders and guidelines related to vaccines, masking, isolation and quarantine will take effect in the coming days and weeks. We want to remind the public that critical tools to fight COVID-19 remain available to everyone at low or no cost. This includes access to COVID-19 vaccines, testing, and treatment.

CHANGES: CDPH is making the following changes to existing COVID-19 guidance.

Masking in High-risk and Health Care Settings

Beginning April 3, masks will no longer be required in indoor high-risk and health care settings. This includes health care, long-term care, and correctional facilities as well as homeless, emergency, and warming and cooling centers. This change takes effect on Monday, April 3 to allows individual health care facilities to develop and implement plans customized to their needs and local conditions to continue to protect residents through the end of the winter virus season. Recommendations for the use of face masks for individuals remain unchanged. See masking guidance. ​CDPH OSHA

Vaccine Requirements for Health Care Workers

Beginning April 3, with federal rules continuing to ensure that most health care workers remain vaccinated for COVID-19, the state will no longer require vaccination for health care workers including those in adult care, direct care, correctional facilities, and detention centers. This change takes effect on Monday, April 3 facilities to develop and implement plans customized to their needs and local conditions to continue to protect residents through the end of the winter virus season. CDPH  OSHA

Reduced Isolation Time After Positive COVID-19 Test

Beginning March 13, a COVID-19 positive person may end isolation after five days if they feel well, have improving symptoms, and are fever-free for 24 hours, with less emphasis on testing negative. This change aligns with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and CDPH recommendations and takes effect today Monday, March 13. CDPH OSHA

RESOURCES REMAIN AVAILABLE: Access to Vaccines, Testing and Treatment

COVID-19 vaccines, testing, and treatment continue to be available through providers and some pharmacies and at some sites within local communities. Visit MyTurn to find services in your area. Individuals who are uninsured or can’t get timely treatment can call 833-686-5051 or visit sesamecare.com/covidca.

Additional Resources

Note: One big change that will impact schools is reduced isolation time for individuals recovering from COVID-19. Beginning March 13, a person who has tested positive needs to isolate at home for just five days rather than 10 — regardless of testing — as long as they’re feeling well, have improving symptoms and are fever-free for 24 hours. 

SBC Public Health

Written by SBC Public Health

Public information provided by the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department. Learn more at https://www.countyofsb.org/410/Public-Health

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  3. President Trump spearheaded operation Warp Speed, which saved many millions of lives. Love him or hate him, there’s a very good chance he (Trump) saved your life and the lives of many whom you love. Give it a break and look at it objectively and at least be person enough to admit many of us are here today due to his forward thinking. Think about it…..

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    • BABYCAKES – ” there’s a very good chance he (Trump) saved your life” … “admit many of us are here today due to his forward thinking.” BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH absolute BS. His JOB was to push for this. He only did it after he KILLED hundreds of thousands by telling them it was a hoax, go to work, don’t wear masks, don’t get vaxxed, etc etc.. Dude, it’s like praising Stalin because he didn’t kill every single person. Thank you comrade Stalin for letting my family live! Dude you are in a land of make believe. Is Mr. Rogers there too?

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    • No denying that the vaccine was brought forth very/very quickly via Operation Warp Speed, which no one is denying was green-lighted and promoted by the previous president/administration. Only doing his job…yeah, I’ll buy that. Not sure of the reason why anyone wants to praise and thank Stalin for not killing every single person…maybe it has something to do with something….I dunno, but nothing to do with the life-saving vaccine and/or the speed by which it was brought about. “Make believe” would be the exact opposite of what my comment said….possibly a misread?

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  5. Sacjon
    Spanish Flu virus killed 21Million back when world population was 7 times smaller than it is today.
    Small pox is caused by a virus and killed 300 -500 Million people in the 20th century
    The USA was losing 8% of its population per year to small pox (yes it is caused be a virus) before the first vaccine was given officially in 1800. During the Revolutionary War soldiers would run a thread through a dead persons smallpox pustule, cut their left hand and embed the pus covered thread into the cut as a very primitive vaccine

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  7. “Remember when no one in the history of the planet Earth had ever had any experience with the brand new virus that spread rapidly, killing millions of people within a year”
    I’d remember getting an “F” in World History though

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    • EDNEY – The world is a MUCH different place now than back then. But, what we DID learn, we tried to use but people like you refused to be “told” what to do – masks, washing hands, keeping distance, avoiding crowds, etc.
      Also, COVID wasn’t “Spanish Flu” or “Small Pox,” hence the name – “novel virus,” so you get an “F-” on your “analogy.”

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  10. VOR – in a few bullet points and without using the past three years to help you. What and why would you have done three years ago if you were the President? Yeah, mistakes were made. Flying by the seats of their pants – what would you do? And again from my post above – who do you trust? Besides yourself?

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    • It’s like breathing along a busy road full of cars vs revving the engine in a closed garage. There’s such a thing as too “much of a bad thing.” Limiting exposure to yourself and others by only unmasking in as-needed situations (eating) is a good way to limit the amount of airborne stranger spittle you inhale directly into your lungs.

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    • Remember when “naturally acquired immunity” wasn’t a real thing and called a conspiracy theory. Remember when they blamed the unvaccinated for creating new variants. Remember when they claimed the pandemic would be over if everyone just got vaccinated and wore a mask. Remember “two weeks to slow the spread”. Remember when everyone in Sweden died because they didn’t take an extreme covid measures. Oh wait, that last one didn’t happen….

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    • Remember when no one in the history of the planet Earth had ever had any experience with the brand new virus that spread rapidly, killing millions of people within a year and therefore did their best to try to keep as many people alive as possible using only the information/technology/science they were aware of at the time?

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    • Remember when they closed beaches and parks because it wasn’t considered safe, but social justice protesting was considered safe, yet covid lockdown protests were not considered safe. Remember when recreational cannabis stores were considered essential businesses but small local retailers were not. Remember when we kept schools closed even though the data showed little to no serious risk for kids and that the rate of spread among teachers/kids in school was less than the general population. Remember when they forced covid positive patients into nursing homes. Remember when they said you wouldn’t get covid if you took the vaccine. It’s important to remember all the wrongs that were supported by Science™ so we do not repeat these same hysteria induced mistakes in the future.

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    • Thomas John, many many people, from public health officials, talking heads on TV, high level politicians and even the president have all said “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.” — that’s a direct quote from President Biden.

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    • Remember when the sitting President convinced millions of his followers that the virus was a hoax and they had to go to work and school instead of isolating themselves? Remember when he convinced all those people to not get vaccinated? Remember when so many of those people DIED because of what he said? I do. I knew some of them unfortunately. They didn’t just lose their jobs for refusing to get vaxxed, they lost their LIVES because they fell for the words of an idiot.
      Stop living in the past, man. You’re absolutely obsessed with it.

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    • Here’s the thing VOR–people made mistakes. No shit.
      Beach closures–stupid.
      Cannabis bla bla–stupid
      Some other stuff–stupid
      Yeah.
      Nooooooooo kidding.
      Now why don’t you be an actual Voice of Reason and list everything that was done right. List everything that Fauci was right about.
      Go on.

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    • Sweden has universal healthcare mostly paid with taxes, so their outcomes are better than ours even before COVID. But if you compare Sweden to its neighboring countries who also have great healthcare, they weren’t a success story. Denmark’s deaths per capita from COVID are 40% lower than Sweden’s, Norway’s 66% lower, Finland’s 52% lower.

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    • You may want to revisit those stats on neighboring countries Gaviotas, and compare the excess deaths amongst them all. To say universal health care is what helped, who was denied healthcare who had covid in the US? That would also imply there were non-vaccine related interventions healthcare providers could have done, why didn’t we do those? I do recall them telling people stay home until they were very very sick and had difficulty breathing, which was really too late to get them any proper treatment, and horrible medical advice.

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    • Don’t forget lying to congress about funding gain of function research, supporting lockdowns and most egregiously, school closures. I’m not sure what Fauci did right relating to the pandemic. Well actually, when he told people cloth / surgical masks won’t help prevent you from catching or spreading covid, but he backtracked on that so it doesn’t really count. (and with the backtrack provided many with an illusion of safety which most likely resulted in people thinking they were being safe, but weren’t, leading to more infections).

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    • “To say universal health care is what helped…”
      Lifelong care for any chronic, pre-existing conditions; health education; trust in the medical system; paid sick days & better leave policies — I don’t know how many other social and health elements played a role.
      Do you really think it so simple as whether someone got treatment or not?!
      And at a time when hospitals were bursting, refrigerator trucks were parked outside, all that hellscape.
      smdh. Whatever.

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    • I did find it rather silly that people would wear a mask into a restaurant and then take it off to eat–but that’s because it wasn’t safe to eat indoors in a restaurant–certainly not before the vaccine, and I never did. FWIW, I’ve never had COVID.
      BTW, in a lot of these discussions it would be helpful to distinguish between masks and respirators–e.g., N95 and KN95, which are far more effective at blocking aerosols if properly fitted.
      https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2788500
      https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0248099
      etc.

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    • @6:59: from SB Public Health in this very article if you bothered to read it: “We want to remind the public that critical tools to fight COVID-19 remain available to everyone at low or no cost. This includes access to COVID-19 vaccines, testing, and treatment.”

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    • VoR: What was the alternative? Doing nothing? Putting your slumlord son-in-law in charge of ventilators then golfing 40% of the working hours? The common thread to all your whining is the legal system. Using public health mandates to shut down protests creates an awful precedent, and to my knowledge lockdown protests were fine as long as they didn’t go on private property. Plus the latter were easier to control with only a few loud kooks. There was the whole tangle over who is liable if someone gets sick, and businesses did the whole 9 yards so they weren’t liable. Pot stores serve medical needs if you’ve been under a rock for the past few years. It’s effective for treating epilepsy, glaucoma, PTSD, and pain. Schools are one giant liability headache, plus the unions rightly put teacher safety first. I’ve never gotten colds as frequently as when I volunteered at my kids’ school. Forcing Covid patients into nursing homes never happened. Maybe you saw that on some Fox show that also discussed space lasers or the massacre at Bowling Green. There are too many lies and half-truths to keep up anymore lol.

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  14. I find the counterarguments to VOR’s comments odd because it means people don’t just skip past them, which is the sensible thing to do. There are forums where such propagandists are effective and he might have been here once but no longer–he’s burned every credibility bridge.

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  15. This is worth reposting, a lot of words being throw around here but no one seems to acknowledge what caused so many, many here, to be so wrong about what the actual “science” was and what the fear mongering hysteria was (not science). It’s important to acknowledge why and how they were so wrong to avoid it happening again in the future. This erroneous assumption lead to polices that had disastrous consequences we’ll be feeling for generations to come. “41% of Democrats thought if you got covid odds of having to go to the hospital were over 50%, another 28% of Democrats who thought the odds were between 20-49%? The correct answer was between 1 and 5%” That means nearly 70% had an incredibly inaccurate and skewed view regarding the dangers of covid.

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    • “disastrous consequences we’ll be feeling for generations to come” – ugh, I’m going to regret this, but what? What disastrously consequences will we feel? “PTSD” from having to wear a mask during a global pandemic? Seems pretty normal to me.
      A lot of the responses (eg, school) were warranted at the time given the knowledge they had at the time, so please don’t lump in those with your “fear mongering hysteria” policies.

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    • Covid didn’t shut business down, covid didn’t close schools, covid didn’t print massive amounts of stimulus, covid didn’t lie to the people about the origins of the virus, it’s mortality rate, covid didn’t deceive the public in the efficacy of the vaccines, or mask. The loss of trust in public health was entirely their fault, pure hubris in thinking they knew what’s best 300+ million Americans so lying and deceiving the public was a-okay if it got people to do what they wanted – hubris. Why you carry water and place so much (misguided) trust in bureaucrats and politicians is beyond me.

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    • I’m ignoring nothing, just asked. Of course, you answered incorrectly. Everything you cite would have happened regardless. It was a GLOBAL PANDEMIC. Stuff got shut down, no one knew what to do other than keep people away from each other, given the contagious nature of the NOVEL virus. So, NO, it wasn’t “fear mongering” that caused this, it was straight up, legitimate FEAR.
      “loss of trust in public health officials/FDA/CDC and Big Pharma, and further divisiveness in society” – that was ENTIRELY on people like you, not the shut downs. That started from your leader and permeates its stink through to today. Look at yourself for example. I still trust medical experts. Do you?
      I had a little hope you had something of substance, but the egg is on my face for thinking you’d do anything but use you’re hindsight glasses to continue to complain about how we reacted to a rapidly spreading, deadly virus. I’m sure you would have done much better at it. LOL. Ok, I’m done. Keep on a’ cryin’

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    • If you’re not ignoring then I’m asking you. Have you acknowledge how/ who/why your assumptions on the risks of covid were so incredibly off base and
      “anti-science”? Will you again listen to the same sources unquestionably next time, or worse, attack the people that do question?

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    • Again, you’re ignoring why your assumptions on the harms of covid were so incredibly off, but to answer your question: loss of learning in children, development issues with young kids, increased drug abuse, mental health issues, and suicides, massive increase in income inequality / wealth gap, record inflation resulting for the massive stimulus needed to counter the anti-scientific and arbitrary business shutdowns, further destruction of the middle class, negative health outcomes due to missed or delayed medical treatment/diagnosis’s, loss of trust in public health officials/FDA/CDC and Big Pharma, and further divisiveness in society – all without any meaningful benefit.

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  17. Science™ : The UK and many other European nations have ended the covid shots for those under 50, yet our FDA just approved a 4th booster shot for INFANTS, for a variant that no longer exists, for a virus that never affected them, based off a trial of 24 participants. AND there is still a big push to get the covid shots added to the childhood immunization schedule (what does immunization mean again?) . That’s public health in the US. (brought to you by Pfizer, we appreciate your business).

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    • The thing with far right repuglicans, like Vor, is they lack a connection with humanity and are unable to muster empathy for others -like the millions of people around the globe that died from disease. Party for people. I’m reading about repugs trying to create a bill in one state that would seek the death sentence for women who had an abortion. Wrong side of history. The party has devolved into a dystopian cesspool. All reminiscent of 30’s Germany.

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    • Yes, you would call a direct quote from the CDC website “dishonest”. Have you given much thought as to why your assumed covid risk was so incredibly disconnected from reality? I could understand your and many others position regarding covid if they though there was a 50% chance of ending up in the hospital – the problem is, you/they were very very wrong and there has been zero acknowledgment of those wrongs, Not that I care about who is right or wrong, but so that in the future you can recognize when you’re being lead by fear and emotion, rather than facts and data.

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    • @2:59 I posted the link including a direct quote, that’s hardly cherry picking. But it is a fact, the CDC, FDA, and Pfizer recommended the shot to, and said it was safe and effective for, pregnant women without actually having tested the shot on pregnant women. Why that isn’t red flag to more people is beyond me, just as the FDA recommending a 4th booster for INFANTS when the rest of the world is pulling them for everyone under 50.

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    • SacJon: I don’t know why you feel the need to apologize to VOR for any comments that you have made. I believe that you have a fairly good grasp on all of this COVID stuff, and it works for you. What works for you (and assume your family) is not necessarily work for others. No need to shut down and make fun of valid information only because you don’t care for the “messenger.” So you would be wise to do a bit more listening rather than condemning, and for goodness sakes….do not apologize for stating your opinion. Think about it (and the advice is not meant to make you feel bad).

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    • Still on the CDC website: “There is limited information available about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines for people who are pregnant; however, based on how these vaccines work in the body, experts believe they are unlikely to pose risk for pregnant people” https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pregnancy/vacc-safety.html#:~:text=Pregnant%20women%20may%20safely%20receive,viral%20vector%20vaccines%20(J%26J).

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    • @8:52 Yes, thank you! That is exactly my point. It was considered disinformation during the pandemic, disinformation that turned out to be real information – which is exactly the problem I’m emphasizing. “Disinformation” was saying “you will not get covid with these vaccines”. “Disinformation” was “two weeks to slow the spread”. “Disinformation” is what caused 70% of Democrats to think the odds of needing to go to the hospital if you got covid was over 20% (41% thought it was over 50%, actual answer between 1-5% and that includes elderly). “Disinformation” was saying “the pandemic would be over if everyone just wore masks” or “if everyone just got vaccinated”. “Disinformation” was saying covid coming from a lab is a “conspiracy theory”. “Disinformation” was calling ivermectin a “horse dewormer”, regardless of its efficacy for covid. “Disinformation” was “six feet apart”. “Disinformation” was saying “naturally acquired immunity” wasn’t a thing and doesn’t protect you. “Disinformation” was social justice protests aren’t “super spreader” events but covid protests or any gathering of conservatives were “super spreader” events. “Disinformation” was saying the unvaccinated were causing new variants. “Disinformation” is counting anyone who died and tested positive for covid was a “covid death”. “Disinformation” was saying “kids will be fine, they’re resilient” regarding school closures. “Disinformation” was saying covid’s risk to children was greater than the flu. “Disinformation” was saying this shot is safe for pregnant women without actually testing it on pregnant women. ”

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  23. Three years ago today COVID authoritarianism went into overdrive with the announcement of 15 days to slow the spread. The greater harm to society was not the novel virus, but the public’s unquestioning acceptance of the unchecked authority of politicians and bureaucrats to force individual and private behavior.

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