Northern Santa Barbara County community leaders relaunch campaign, encourage to continue pandemic precautions

SANTA MARIA, Calif. – With Santa Barbara County officially moving out of the state’s most restrictive COVID-19 restrictions, community leaders in Santa Maria updated a campaign that encourages everyone to continue to take pandemic precautions.

Santa Barbara county moves into the next level of the coronavirus reopening plan Wednesday morning.

“We are thrilled at the progress is being made,” said Glenn Morris, President and CEO of Santa Maria Valley Chamber of Commerce.

The news comes with the risk of more coronavirus spread, so community leaders from Dignity Health, Allan Hancock College, Santa Maria Valley Chamber of Commerce and others are making sure everyone keeps their guard up.

“Focus on the end goal, that progress isn’t enough,” said Morris

The group relaunched an updated “Protect. Respect. Repeat!” campaign that launched several months ago.

The new goal is to encourage residents to protect families, businesses and communities by keeping the same coronavirus precautions in place.

“By masking, sanitizing, social distancing, doing all that together, we can keep our businesses open,” said Sue Andersen, President/CEO at Marian Regional Medical Center.

Even though restaurants, movie theaters and gyms can soon operate indoors with limited capacity in Santa Barbara County, community leaders say this is a small victory on the road back to normalcy.

“We want to keep moving on until we can get students back on campus here, we can get our students back in elementary schools, high schools,” said Allan Hancock President Kevin G. Walthers. “So we just want to give a reminder to people to be diligent, we made it this far, let’s not stop. We can get this job done.”