Santa Barbara County Health Officer Dr. Henning Ansorg issued a health officer order Thursday afternoon requiring all beaches to be closed to the public during the July 4th weekend.
The goes into effect at 12:01 a.m. on Friday and will remain in place until 11:59 p.m. on Sunday.
The order is being issued in response to Santa Barbra County not meeting the threshold criteria for Elevated Disease Transmission, Increasing Hospitalization, and Limited Hospital Capacity for the past 16 days as noted in the County Monitoring Metrics.
“The temporary closure of all beaches is necessary due to the anticipated high volume of people at our beaches during the July 4th weekend, which will impede the practice of safe and necessary social distancing to slow the spread of COVID-19 in Santa Barbara County,” Dr. Ansorg said in a statement. “The landscape for this upcoming weekend has changed in the past few days as more and more counties have decided to close their beaches. This raised significant concern for the impacts to our local community.”
The full health officer order can be found at publichealthsbc.org.
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