Santa Barbara County Hits COVID Code Red as Public Health Director Van Do-Reynoso Departs

This past Tuesday, the fond farewells showered upon Van Do-Reynoso — who stepped down last week after five very long years as Santa Barbara County’s public health director just as the county’s COVID risk level moved to “high” — by the county supervisors was infused with a sense of urgency and intimacy common to people who have spent too much time hunkered down in the same foxhole.

That’s because, in this case, they have.

For the past two and a half years, Do-Reynoso held the unenviable task of guiding Santa Barbara County through the COVID pandemic, the most profound, prolonged, deadly public health crisis to seize Santa Barbara County — not to mention the state, the nation, and the world — since the great flu epidemic of 1919. Before COVID, Do-Reynoso found herself occupying the Public Health hot seat during the debris flow of January 9, 2018, when 23 people perished. Before that, it was the raging inferno of 2017’s Thomas Fire, which reigned briefly as the biggest and worst fire in state history.