Santa Barbara County will likely be under a new stay-at-home order within the next week, thanks to Governor Gavin Newsom’s new break up of California by region rather than county.
The governor divided the state by five separate regions: Northern California, the greater Sacramento area, the Bay Area, the San Joaquin Valley, and Southern California, which includes Santa Barbara County. Any region whose intensive-care-unit capacity falls under 15 percent will be placed under a stay-at-home order for three weeks.
Newsom announced the order on Thursday, when the state saw its highest-ever daily new COVID-19 case count. On Wednesday, the state’s COVID-19 dashboard showed that 20,759 new cases had been reported over the past 24 hours — nearly 2,500 more cases than the previous high of 18,350.