Stubborn Prevalence of COVID in Santa Barbara County
Case Count and Hospitalizations Slowly Rising
Just as Santa Barbara County was getting a taste of normalcy with mask mandates lifting, cases of COVID-19 are inching upward. Locally, new cases averaged 66 over the past seven days, compared to 63 the prior seven days — and 1,000 at the height of the Omicron surge in January. Around California, the seven-day average was 4,812 on May 3, compared to 3,286 one week before.
Medical professionals estimate the amount of virus in the community is actually much higher. “Given that Omicron variants are more transmissible but often cause no symptoms or milder disease, we are not capturing the true prevalence,” said Dr. Charles Fenzi of Santa Barbara Neighborhood Clinics. He added that there is no measure for asymptomatic carriers or those who test at home and are positive, leading to the actual number of positive cases to be much higher than formal reporting would indicate.
“The positivity rate does not necessarily speak to the impact of the virus on our communities, which is more accurately measured by the number of hospitalized patients and of those, the number who are critically ill,” said Dr. Naishadh Buch, chief operations officer of Lompoc Valley Medical Center.
