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KENNETH SONG/NEWS-PRESS FILE PHOTOSanta Barbara County Public Health Department nurse Anne Carlisle fills a syringe with a COVID-19 vaccine during a vaccine clinic at The Santa Barbara Health Care Center in August.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, is predicting that most states will see a peak with the omicron variant by mid-February.
States in the northeast and upper midwest have already peaked and declined somewhat sharply, but in the southern and western states, cases are still rising, according to Dr. Fauci.
‘“It’s not going to be uniform throughout the country because we have different dynamics and different regions throughout the country,” he said.
“You never want to be overconfident when you’re dealing with this virus.” Dr. Fauci told ABC’s “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz Sunday.
KENNETH SONG/NEWS-PRESS FILE Martha Patonino gets her COVID-19 vaccine at The Lark in May.“Even with omicron, boosting makes a major, major difference in protecting you from hospitalization and severe outcomes,” Dr. Fauci reported, referring to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Things are looking good. We don’t want to get overconfident, but they look like they’re going in the right direction right now,” said Dr. Fauci.
Ahead of the upcoming Winter Olympics, Beijing began mass testing 2 million residents as China began tightening restrictions last week. After 25 cases were found in the Fengtai district and 14 cases were found elsewhere, Beijing residents who were at a high risk for infection were ordered not to leave the area.
Beijing must “take the most resolute, decisive and strict measures to block the transmission chain of the epidemic,” a city government spokesman, Xu Hejian, said during a news conference.
Back at home, Santa Barbara County has seen 72,722 COVID cases and 589 deaths, as of Friday, according to the Public Health Department. The department reported that 6,325 cases are still infectious, and 70% of the eligible 5-and-older county population is fully vaccinated.
Of the entire county population, 65.9% is vaccinated, according to the department.
Santa Barbara County has the 34th highest COVID-related death rate among California’s 58 counties, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.
As of Sunday, the U.S. has seen a total of 866,198 COVID-19-related deaths and more than 70.5 million cases, according to Johns Hopkins University.
According to the CDC, 67.3% of the nation’s eligible 5-and-older population is fully vaccinated. The CDC said the number is 63.3% for the entire U.S. population.
Of those who are fully vaccinated across the nation, 39.7% have had booster shots.
As of Wednesday, 151,598 people in the U.S. were hospitalized with COVID-19, and of those, 25,978, were in ICUs, according to Our World in Data (ourworldindata.org).
As of Friday in Santa Barbara County, 149 people were recovering in hospitals. Another 15 were recovering in ICUs.
email: kzehnder@newspress.com
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