Goleta City Hall Closes In-Person Services for COVID

Santa Barbara County Case Rate Up 150 Percent

The City of Goleta has closed its doors to in-person services, opting for phone and email contact, but the libraries will switch to curbside books, as library staffer Jill Ronkainen demonstrates. | Credit: Courtesy City of Goleta

Goleta City Hall closed to the public on Friday due to concern over increased COVID-19 infections countywide, and the city is switching to phone and email contact.

The county’s case rate rose to 1,253 new cases on Thursday, a 150 percent jump over the prior two-week average of 501. Throughout the state, cases are increasing drastically. Daily new cases statewide had a seven-day average of between 3,800 and 5,400 in the days leading into December, but the rate rose into the tens of thousands toward the end of the month. January 6’s new cases averaged 36,282.

In the genetic sequencing posted today at the county, the Omicron variant count increased from five to 26. Only a small fraction of county samples are sequenced, while statewide sequencing encompasses about 10 percent of samples. A newly revamped California variant tracker shows Omicron to be 74.7 percent of all sequenced samples as of December 29. However, that data is incomplete, the website page states, and the last full set of information is dated December 26 with 75.6 percent of sequences coming up Omicron. The remaining sequences that turned up variants of concern are Delta for both dates.