85% of COVID patients in Santa Barbara County hospitals unvaccinated, health officials say

At least 85% of all patients hospitalized with COVID-19 during the month of August were unvaccinated, while 9% of patients were fully vaccinated, the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department shared on Tuesday.

There were 112 Santa Barabra County residents who received hospital treatment for COVID-19 during August, including 95 unvaccinated patients and 10 fully vaccinated patients, Public Health Director Van Do-Reynoso told the county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday. The vaccination status was unknown for another seven patients.

Between the 100 COVID-19 patients hospitalized during the months of May, June, and July, 88 were unvaccinated and 22 were fully vaccinated, according to the Public Health Department.

“What that tells us is that the vaccines are effective in keeping people out of the hospital … and preventing serious illness leading to hospitalization,” Do-Reynoso said.

About 75% of county residents 12 and older have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccines.

“To get 75% of people to agree on anything is almost unbelievable,” County Supervisor Steve Lavagnino said.

Lavagnino has a family member who is resistant to getting vaccinated for COVID-19 and he shares the hospitalization information with them, as a “gentle nudge,” he said.

“Whether you want the vaccine or don’t want the vaccine, the reality is if you’re unvaccinated, you have a much higher percentage of ending up with a serious health risk and outcome, and that’s all I share, and I don’t put any pressure on them,” he said during Tuesday’s meeting.

The Public Health Department also reported that about two-thirds of COVID-19 hospital admissions in August were among individuals under the age of 64.

“This is a shift that we had seen before and it’s continuing,” Do-Reynoso said.

The overall median age of hospitalized patients in August was 54 years old. The median age among unvaccinated patients was 52.5 years old and the median age of vaccinated patients was 80 years old, Do-Reynoso said.

The length of stay for COVID-19 patients during the month of August ranged from same-day discharge to 25 days, while the median length of stay was four days, she added.

Ten of the 112 hospitalized patients in August were admitted to intensive-care units, and one person died while being treated in the ICU, according to Do-Reynoso. Nine COVID-19 patients passed away while receiving treatment in regular hospital beds.

While public health and hospital officials have said that North County communities are seeing more cases and hospitalizations than South County communities recently, Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital reported more total COVID-19 hospital patients in August than either the Marian Regional Medical Center in Santa Maria and the Lompoc Valley Medical Center.

The number of current hospitalizations has decreased since last week, to 66 on Monday, and the county reported 65.5% of total hospital beds in use this week, and 69.7% of ICU beds in use this week, which is lower than the previous week.

The county’s COVID-19 case rate per 100,000 people was 17.1 as of Sept. 9 (an average daily case count of 77), which is a 25% decrease from two weeks ago when the county reported a case rate of 22.8, Do-Reynoso said.

“I am cautiously optimistic that we will continue to experience this downward trend in our county,” she added.

Do-Reynoso presented a graph showing the relationship between vaccination rates and case rates, revealing that California counties with higher vaccination rates, such as Marin County, typically have a lower case rate, and counties with lower vaccination rates, such as Lassen County, typically have higher case rates relative to their population.

“Santa Barbara County is right in the middle … at about 22 cases, our hope is that as we increase in our vaccine coverage, then our case rate will also correspondingly be lower,” Do-Reynoso said.

There were 57 active COVID-19 outbreaks as of Tuesday morning, including 11 in businesses, 25 in schools, and 21 in congregate living facilities, according to Do-Reynoso. The Public Health Department has not disclosed any details about these outbreaks, including the locations or number of involved cases.

As of this week, there are six skilled nursing facilities with active novel coronavirus cases among healthcare workers. One positive case is enough to be classified as an outbreak in these congregate care facilities for the elderly.

The Public Health Department continues to prioritize ensuring community access to COVID-19 testing, Do-Reynoso said, and there are free testing sites available countywide.

Countywide demand has been growing steadily over the past few months to around 16,000 tests weekly.

Public Health laboratory director Dr. Stewart Comer presented some technical information about different types of novel coronavirus testing.

He said polymerase chain reaction (PCR) COVID-19 tests, which typically use a nasal swab, are not perfect, but the technology “is absolutely the commercial gold standard that is available and it is the most commonly utilized testing methodology for all upper respiratory viruses.”

He explained that all upper respiratory infections are tested with a PCR test, and it is an analyzer that has full Food and Drug Administration approval.

Comer said that Santa Barbara County, as well as the state, uses one of the top three performing antigen kits that have over a 97% sensitivity rate.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Pacific Diagnostics Laboratory has completed over 200,000 COVID-19 tests, and the rate of indeterminate results is less than 0.03%, or three in 10,000, Comer said.

There are reportedly nationwide shortages of antigen tests, including the Abbott BinaxNOW tests, due to growing testing demand from the increases in novel coronavirus cases.

The Public Health Department has limited supplies of these tests and “will be using our scarce medical resource process to allocate the kits we have left to facilities that are experiencing outbreaks,” the department told its healthcare system partners in a weekly meeting Sept. 9.

Vaccination rates

As of Monday, 66.6% of eligible Santa Barbara County residents were fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and almost 75% of people 12 and older had received at least one dose.

“So when we talk about actual numbers, that would be 128,189 eligible Santa Barbara County residents who are not yet vaccinated,” Do-Reynoso said.

The state shares the county’s vaccination rate by ZIP code and highlights vaccine equity metric areas that report lower vaccination rates, and Noozhawk previously reported on the vaccine disparities among those communities.

Communities with vaccination rates lower than the countywide percentage include Buellton, Las Cruces, Sisquoc, Santa Maria Valley, Orcutt, New Cuyama, Lompoc, Vandenberg Village and Mission Hills, the western Goleta Valley, Isla Vista, Gaviota, Naples, and Casmalia.

The vaccination percentages range from 34% in Casmalia/Antonio area to 100% in Carpinteria, a zip code with only 405 residents.

The most significant increases in vaccination rates have been among the communities in the vaccine equity metric areas, which are communities with less access to education, healthcare, and other social determinants of health, Do-Reynoso said.

For the week ending Sept. 7, ZIP codes with the highest percentage increase in vaccination rates were in Guadalupe (93434), Santa Maria (93458) and the Santa Maria, Sisquoc and Garey areas (93454).

“Our focus has been in those areas, we are seeing a slight increase in those ZIP codes,” Do-Reynoso said. “We’re really celebrating these increases in these particular ZIP codes because we are seeing that our efforts are netting traction.”