Beachgoers keeping their distance on Goleta beach.
The Santa Barbara County Public Health Department announced 60 new cases on COVID-19 Wednesday, bringing the county’s total case count to 6,586.
It should be noted that the total case count is still not accurate due to technical problems with California’s reporting system, which has underreported the amount of cases in several counties.
“The state’s electronic disease reporting system has been experiencing issues processing incoming reports. Therefore, recent data published on the SB County Public Health COVID-19 dashboards are likely to be an underestimate of true cases in the county. This disclaimer will be in place until the state reporting issue is rectified,” the county’s website reads.
Of the total cases, 224 are still considered active with 82 people recovering in the hospital and 25 being taken care of in the Intensive Care Unit.
The county’s website also saw three new deaths added, bringing the county’s total to 67. Two of the deaths came from the communities of Montecito, Summerland, and the city of Carpinteria, which now has four, while the other death came from Santa Maria, the city’s 36th death, most in the county.
The majority of the cases announced Wednesday were out of Santa Maria, which announced 19 new cases. Santa Maria has the most cases by city in the county with 2,960.
No other city has more than 1,000 recorded cases and there are currently 97 active cases in Santa Maria.
Santa Barbara reported 17 new cases and now has a total of 866 cases in the city, 48 of which are active.
Lompoc recorded six new cases while Goleta announced four new cases.
Orcutt, the unincorporated areas of Sisquoc, Casmalia, Garey, Cuyama, New Cuyama and the city of Guadalupe and the unincorporated areas between Goleta Valley and Gaviota each saw two new cases while Isla Vista and the communities of Montecito, Summerland, and the city of Carpinteria recorded one new case each.
There were also no new cases in the Federal Prison Complex in Lompoc, which, according to the county’s website, has no current active cases.
Broken down by age range, the bracket with the most cases came from residents between 18 and 29 with 24 new cases, bringing the total to 1,750.
There were also 16 new cases in the 30-49 age range, which has the most cases in the county with exactly 2,600.
The 0-17 age range saw five new cases, 50-69 saw 14 and those in the 70-plus group saw two new cases.
Cottage Health also issued an update to its numbers and reported that it is currently caring for a total of 285 patients across all campuses.
228 are acute care patients meaning that 160 acute care beds remain available. Sixteen of those patients are on ventilators and 13 are in critical care.
email: jmercado@newspress.com
