Santa Barbara Supes Meeting Turns Testy as Shutdown Grinds On

It was an hour into the Santa Barbara County supervisors’ meeting before anyone asked if the governor had replied to the request to separate the tri counties from the Southern California Region. The state’s new COVID regions count available intensive care beds, and the information that morning was bad: SoCal was at 1.7 percent availability, down from 10.1 a week ago; the tri counties were at 30 percent, down from 34.8. And, no, Newsom had not replied, said County Executive Officer Mona Miyasato, answering Supervisor Steve Lavagnino’s question.

Newsom was at that time holding a press conference and announcing the delivery of 33,150 Pfizer vaccines to four locations yesterday, and that all 327,600 doses from Pfizer would arrive in California by the end of the week. Pfizer had additionally committed another 393,900 doses for delivery the following week, and Moderna, once approved, would deliver 672,000 doses by the end of the year.

The vaccines due to arrive in Santa Barbara County, Public Health Director Van Do-Reynoso told the supervisors, would go to Cottage and Marian Medical — two boxes each, totaling 3,900 doses from Pfizer — and 6,600 doses from Moderna were expected next week if the Food and Drug Administration gave the company an Emergency Use Authorization. A third allocation from Pfizer would follow, Do-Reynoso said. Supervisor Gregg Hart noted that would cover about two-thirds of the 20,000 frontline medical workers in the county, and the second dose would come from future shipments.