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UCSB to participate in MPSF swimming and diving championships - B4
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65-74 age group now eligible for vaccine But officials say there aren’t enough doses to administer By GRAYCE MCCORMICK NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
The Santa Barbara County Department of Public Health announced Tuesday that residents who are 65 and older are now eligible to receive their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. That being the case, there will likely be a wait in the coming weeks for those individuals to schedule an appointment and actually receive the first dose. Santa Barbara County is currently vaccinating frontline health care workers and those 75 and older, and there is a limited supply of vaccine from the state. Therefore, Public Health vaccine sites such as Cottage Health and Sansum Clinic do not have first dose appointments
available yet for those between ages 65 and 74. On Saturday, Sansum Clinic CEO and Chief Medical Officer Kurt Ransohoff sent a letter to Sansum patients, telling them “just because the county announced that people ages 65 and older are eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccination does not mean that we have received more vaccines to give out.” “This decision makes more than 40,000 residents age 65 and over eligible, yet the county is only receiving a small fraction of that amount, much of which is needed for second doses, to vaccinate people from Carpinteria to Santa Maria,” Dr. Ransohoff wrote. “Despite the fact that we have built a Please see vaccine on A4
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A crowd of 483 turned out on this day last year when UCSB played the first night baseball game ever at Caesar Uyesaka Stadium. Fans will not be allowed this season because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fan ban at UCSB University forbids spectators for rest of school year
By MARK PATTON NEWS-PRESS SENIOR WRITER
The ban on spectators at UCSB sporting events has been extended to the end of the school year, university officials announced Tuesday. A UCSB statement noted that all events on campus will remain closed to spectators “per our campus and regional protocols.” “We all realize how disappointing this is,” UCSB director of athletics John McCutcheon said. “Our home
crowd gives us a competitive edge, and we would love for you to be in the stands cheering on your Gauchos. “All of the rules and protocols that have been established are for the protection of our studentathletes, coaches and staff and will allow them to compete.” The fan ban has been used to good effect throughout the basketball season. The Gaucho men have, so far, had no positive tests for the coronavirus. The women’s team had its first three games canceled in late November
after receiving a positive test within the coaching staff, but all subsequent tests have been negative. UCSB’s baseball team will play its first game at 3 p.m. Friday when it begins a three-game home series with Santa Clara. The two teams will also play Saturday and Sunday at 1 p.m. University officials said the game will not be allowed to proceed when spectators attempt to watch the action through the perimeter fencing. “Our campus remains closed to
all but essential personnel, and we must discourage all of you from attempting to watch a game from outside the venue,” a university statement said. Baseball and swimming are the only winter and spring schedules released so far by the Gauchos. The rest, however, are expected to be announced in the coming days UCSB, which has been ranked as high as No. 8 in the national preseason baseball polls, had won eight consecutive games last year Please see fan ban on A4
Santa Maria-Bonita School District prepares COVID-19 safety plan By ANNELISE HANSHAW NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
The Santa Maria-Bonita School District has not yet submitted its reopening plan to the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department, but it’s preparing one to be presented at next week’s board meeting, Superintendent Luke Ontiveros told the News-Press. He is waiting for the California legislature to pass, reject or edit Assembly Bill 10, often referred to as Gov. Gavin Newsom’s “Safe Schools for All” plan. It would permit schools to reopen with approved safety plans when case
rates reach 25 daily cases per 100,000 people for at least five consecutive days. The legislation would require schools to make an effort to reopen after a county has been in California’s red tier for two weeks. Despite Gov. Newsom’s prediction that the legislation would pass last week, the legislature is still reviewing the bill. Superintendent Ontiveros has a main objection with AB 10: the legislation’s weekly asymptomatic testing of teachers and students. Currently, the district tests 2,000 employees in
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campus, and Superintendent Ontiveros anticipates successful contact tracing even when students are back in classrooms. Currently only high-risk small cohorts are meeting. According to the interactive school reopening map on the Safe Schools for All hub, most urban public school districts have not yet reopened elementary schools. “We’re the biggest district in the county,” Superintendent Ontiveros said. “Most of the schools that have been able to reopen have been smaller in Please see reopenings on A4
Beachside drive-in theaters planned for SB film festival By GRAYCE MCCORMICK NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
The 36th Santa Barbara International Film Festival will, in fact, be held this year, but in a way like none other. The festival announced Tuesday it is planning an elaborate build-out of two beachside drive-in theaters for the festival presented by UGG, beginning March 31 and continuing to April 10. The drive-in theaters will be presented by Toyota Mirai and hosted at Santa Barbara City College. They’ll include more than 80 film screenings, all offered for free, with viewers RSVPing prior to arrival. The festival also unveiled its poster for the 36th edition, designed by Barbara Boros and featuring Santa Barbara’s Alice Keck Park Memorial Gardens. Along with the drive-ins, the festival will offer a full-scale, ticketed virtual component, which will offer online film screenings, filmmaker Q&As, industry panels and celebrity tributes. Tribute honorees include Bill
Murray, Sacha Baron Cohen, Amanda Seyfried, Riz Ahmed, Maria Bakalova, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Andra Day, Sidney Flanigan, Vanessa Kirby, Tahar Rahim, Zendaya and Delroy Lindo. The tributes and industry panels will be aired live, over the festival’s virtual platform. Festival programmers, who received a record number of film submissions this year, have assembled a lineup including more than 100 films, many of them world and U.S. premieres. The film lineup and schedule will be announced in early March. “It’s imperative we bring a sense of hopefulness to 2021, but in the safest way possible,” SBIFF Executive Director Roger Durling said in a news release. “A virtual component was a given but experiencing movies in socially distanced cars and being by the ocean felt oh so perfectly Santa Barbara, Calif.” Passes for the 2021 festival are now on sale, along with the tickets for the celebrity tributes, at sbiff.org/tickets. email: gmccormick@newspress. com
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two-month cycles. “That’s been a pretty daunting task, so coordinating testing of all staff members and students every week is not something we’d like to take on,” he said. The funds provided in AB 10 would not cover the full cost of asymptomatic testing, but Superintendent Ontiveros is much more concerned with the logistics than the price tag. “To just have the capacity to administer, catalog and ship those tests would be pretty daunting for our current school health staff,” he said. The district has tracked COVID-19 cases in adults on
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The Santa Barbara International Film Festival has unveiled its new poster.
Sudoku................. B3 Sports ................... B4 Weather................ A4
Saturday’s SUPER LOTTO: 18-22-38-40-42 Meganumber: 13
Tuesday’s DAILY 4: 3-8-5-2
Tuesday’s MEGA MILLIONS: 1-36-44-54-66 Meganumber: 10
Tuesday’s FANTASY 5: 9-11-14-20-35
Tuesday’s DAILY DERBY: 12-05-03 Time: 1:41.75
Saturday’s POWERBALL: 20-28-33-63-68 Meganumber: 20
Tuesday’s DAILY 3: 5-1-8 / Tuesday’s Midday 7-8-2