Surge in COVID Cases Strikes Skilled Nursing Facilities
Santa Barbara County’s Post-Holiday Spike Affects Senior Care Homes
The calendar doesn’t lie.
Four weeks after Thanksgiving, hospitals began hitting their peak COVID patient-load since the pandemic began — an increase that public health officials in Santa Barbara County attributed to traditional holiday dinner parties. Santa Barbara’s intensive-care unit (ICU) bed count dropped to 12.3 percent over Christmas and on Monday hit 6.7 percent, its lowest yet. The Southern California Region has been at zero ICU capacity since December 17, and its worst-hit area, Los Angeles, faces COVID patients in hospital common areas and freezer trucks in the back bays for bodies.
Although Santa Barbara County is not testing for the presence of the new B117 variant of the coronavirus — a mutated SARS-CoV-2 virus first identified in Great Britain and considered more contagious than the original virus — it requires congregate-care facilities to test all staff and residents every week. Older residents remain vulnerable to the highly transmissible disease, and a situation report stated the county was investigating outbreaks at 53 facilities.
