Latest Santa Cruz Co. COVID News: Record-High Case Rate; Vaccines

Courtney Teague
·3 min read

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY, CA — Santa Cruz County is ramping up its efforts to vaccinate more high-priority residents.

This comes as the county's case rate hit an all-time high this week at 71 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents per day, said county Health Officer Gail Newel during a Friday news conference. By comparison, Santa Cruz County's daily case rate was seven cases per 100,000 when it returned to the purple tier in November.

Newel's message now is the same as it was then, albeit more urgent: stay home.

While case rates in many counties appear to be leveling off or even decreasing, Santa Cruz County continues to experience a surge, she said. And it hasn't even seen the potential impacts felt from mixing over the Christmas and New Year holidays.

Still, it's possible that regional stay-at-home orders could be lifted in the Bay Area in as soon as two weeks, Newel said. Locally, hospitalization and intensive care unit availability statistics remain a concern.

"We need to be vigilant, especially our most fragile, our elderly, until they can be vaccinated," Newel said.

Santa Cruz County announced this week a partnership with Safeway in hopes to distribute 500 vaccine doses per day, beginning with health care workers. There are currently 14,700 Santa Cruz County health care workers who are in the highest-priority vaccine distribution tier, known as Phase 1A.

Next week, the county hopes to begin vaccinating people in Phase 1B, including those who are ages 65 and older, with priority going to those ages 75 and older because they are at higher risk, said David Ghilarducci, the county's deputy health officer, during the news conference.

Priorities also include those who are in the county's critical workforce and those who work in schools.

“Our goal is to distribute vaccine supplies as quickly as possible, and doing that demands that we rely on the strength of our local partnerships with health care providers, including Safeway pharmacies,” said Mimi Hall, county Health Services Agency director, in a news release. “Ending this pandemic will take our entire community working together, and we are grateful for the partnerships we have as well as those we will form in the coming weeks and months.”

The county will be working with four Safeway pharmacies, Hall said during the news conference. Safeway vaccinations will take place at a location to be announced in the future.

County officials will hold a test run for a mass-vaccination drive-thru clinic Monday for a select few hundred people in Phase 1A at the fairgrounds in Watsonville, Hall said. The clinic will not be open to the general public on that day.

Officials have observed many myths about the COVID-19 vaccines on social media, Ghilarducci said. Allergic reactions to the vaccines are rare and usually only observed in people with a history of allergies, he said. There's no evidence to suggest they can impact fertility and it's not biologically possible to catch COVID-19 from the vaccine.

"The vaccines have been tested on tens of thousands of people and they're shown to be safe," Ghilarducci said.

"The benefits of this vaccine far outweigh any small risk of allergy."

There have been more than 12,600 COVID-19 cases reported in Santa Cruz County as of Friday, including some 2,700 active cases and 130 deaths that have been linked to the coronavirus.

Here's the latest COVID-19 case count by community:

  • Aptos: 620

  • Ben Lomond: 83

  • Boulder Creek: 112

  • Capitola: 334

  • Felton: 114

  • Freedom: 791

  • Santa Cruz: 2,899

  • Scotts Valley: 300

  • Soquel: 280

  • Watsonville: 6,733

  • Unincorporated: 171

  • Under investigation: 212

This article originally appeared on the Capitola-Soquel Patch