If grocery markets and crowded retail stores are anything to go by, about half of Santa Barbara thinks it's a good idea to wear a mask indoors in public places, even though the mask mandate was eliminated in February. Employees who meet regular customers and first-time visitors face-to-face every day have seen coworkers and friends absent from work because of a rise in COVID cases, and they've decided to be careful. The numbers at the county COVID dashboard bear out what they've seen: The new-cases graph bounces up and down, but since April, the trajectory has steadily gone up, with the county’s weekly coronavirus cases this past week roughly doubling.
While infections have increased significantly, hospitalizations — though higher — have not compromised the health-care system. Illnesses are less severe than before — many patients learn they have COVID when they go to the hospital for other procedures — either due to vaccination or remaining immunity from a recent infection. COVID remains the leading cause of respiratory illness in the community, said Dr. Lynn Fitzgibbons, an infectious-disease specialist and educator at Cottage Health. And testing remains important to know the level of what is a very, very contagious disease, she said.
A new nationwide program, Test to Treat, has assembled all the ingredients for COVID care in a single place. In Santa Barbara , they can be found at the Public Health trailer at Direct Relief and the Santa Maria Fairgrounds. (See publichealthsbc.org/test-to-treat or call the Santa Maria site at [888] 634-1123 x8 to make an appointment.) Anyone with a positive test either at home or at the health-care site will speak with a nurse in person or through video, explained Dr. Henning Ansorg, Santa Barbara County's health officer, to check them out for the medication — most often Paxlovid.