By edhat staff
The Public Health Officer, Dr. Henning Ansorg, clarified the meaning of the “underlying health conditions” as the Department of Public Health (PHD) reported two new deaths through COVID-19.
On Tuesday, the doctor reported that a person lived in the city of Santa Maria and was 50-69 years old. The other person lived in the unincorporated area of North County and was over 70 years old. None of them had underlying health conditions and their deaths are not associated with an outbreak at a congregated care unit.
Dr. Ansorg said he hates the phrase “underlying health conditions” because many people reject death if they hear the phrase and it didn’t help. An underlying health condition could be something minor, such as someone “slightly overweight” or suffering from asthma, he said, adding that “the recent death of a 16-year-old due to COVID-19 was “tragic.”
Santa Barbara County had a fair share of patients who gave in to the virus or were hospitalized, who had little or no previous health problems, Dr. Ansorg said. Due to privacy laws, PHD is constantly discussing how to maintain patient privacy while being transparent with the community about the severity of these diseases.
As the holiday season has not yet come to an end, new cases of COVID-19 continue to grow at an unprecedented rate. Currently, there are ten times more people infected in the county compared to November, and this is a direct consequence of the assembly in an accelerated manner, said Dr. Ansorg.
The doctor briefly touched on the recently reported mutated strains of COVID-19 in the UK and South Africa and said it is common for mutations, and at this time scientists do not believe this strain will steal the vaccine.
Tuesday’s numbers
On Tuesday, the doctorate reported 264 new COVID-19 cases and two new deaths, as previously mentioned. The county has now reached 150 total deaths due to the pandemic.
Santa Barbara County currently has 1,245 active cases with 103 hospitalizations, including 22 in the intensive care unit (ICU).
The Southern California region continues to have an ICU availability of 0%, while Santa Barbara County reports an ICU availability of 40.5%.
Cottage Health, one of the main hospitals in Santa Barbara County, reported on Tuesday that the intensive care capacity is 38.6%. There are 55 patients in isolation with COVID-19 symptoms, 52 are confirmed to be COVID-19 positive. Of the 55 patients in isolation, 10 are in critical care.
In the week of December 7-13, Cottage Health performed 4,037 COVID-19 laboratory tests, 376 returning as positive. Between December 14-20, 4,462 COVID-19 laboratory tests were collected, 408 being positive.
More data is available at publichealthsbc.org.