Santa Barbara County health experts call for more COVID testing despite move to red reopening tier
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — St. Patrick’s Day was the first major holiday in California to fall short in 2020 due to COVID-19 restrictions. Now, it’s the first major holiday many California counties were able to celebrate thanks to a recent promotion to the state's less-restrictive Red Tier.
On Tuesday, Santa Barbara County moved from the Purple Tier, the most restrictive tier, to the Red Tier. One piece of the puzzle health officials look at to determine reopening status is vaccine distribution.
For Santa Barbara County to move into the even less restrictive Orange Tier, the county needs a below 5% positive test rate. Santa Barbara County Public Health officials said the county is currently at 3.3%. So the county must maintain its below 5% positive test rate for three more weeks in order to be eligible to move into the Orange Tier.
Health officials said the best way to keep the test rate low is for people to continue wearing masks, avoid large gatherings and wash their hands frequently. They also encourage more people to get tested more often. It will help them know where the virus is in the community and an overall increase in negative tests will help lower the positive test rate.
Matt Higgs is Santa Barbara Public Health's EMS coordinator. He said, "Without the continued testing we have the risk of having cases spread throughout the community and dropping us back into the purple tier."
Santa Barbara County Public Health on Monday moved their mobile testing clinic from Carpinteria to East Beach in Santa Barbara. The goal is to increase testing within the Latinx community.
Cottage Hospital is encouraging their patients to utilize the rapid tests available at some of their urgent care locations. A patient can be tested in their car and receive a result in 45 minutes.
Dr. David Fisk is an infectious disease specialist for Cottage Hospital and Sansum Clinics. He said, "Without [testing] we don't know what's happening. If you think back to the beginning of this, you know of March of last year in the United States, we had the disease spreading and we had no idea of telling where it was and where it wasn't because we didn't have testing."
Both state and county-provided tests are free. Results take about one to two days to come back. Cottage Hospital’s rapid tests are $189, but with a major insurance provider, they could be as low as an office visit co-pay.
For more information about the state-run free tests, visit their website here. For more information about Cottage Hospital’s rapid tests, visit their website here.
