Maine CDC reports 4 deaths and 160 coronavirus cases statewide
By Rosemary Lausier, Bangor Daily News Staff
This story will be updated.
Another four Mainers have died as 160 coronavirus cases have been reported across the state, Maine health officials said Saturday.
The number of coronavirus cases diagnosed in the past 14 days statewide is 3,095. This is an estimation of the current number of active cases in the state, as the Maine CDC is no longer tracking recoveries for all patients. That’s down from 3,446 on Friday.
Maine CDC Director Nirav Shah warned earlier this month that a resurgence in virus transmission is possible if new virus variants appear in Maine, which is still seeing new caseloads well above where they were prior to late October. Here is what you need to know about the new strain after it was detected in Maine earlier this week.
The statewide death toll stands at 647.
Saturday’s report brings the total number of coronavirus cases in Maine to 42,419, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s up from 42,259 on Friday.
Of those, 33,823 have been confirmed positive, while 8,596 were classified as “probable cases,” the Maine CDC reported.
The new case rate statewide Saturday was 1.2 cases per 10,000 residents, and the total case rate statewide was 316.94.
Maine’s seven-day average for new coronavirus cases is 195, down from 208.9 a day ago, down from 271 a week ago and down from 581.4 a month ago. That rate has been steadily falling since Jan. 14, when it peaked at 625.6.
The most cases have been detected in Mainers in their 20s, while Mainers over 80 years old make up the majority of deaths. More cases and deaths have been recorded in women than men.
So far, 1,476 Mainers have been hospitalized at some point with COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus. Additional information about those hospitalizations was not immediately available Saturday.
The total statewide hospitalization rate on Saturday was 11.03 patients per 10,000 residents.
Cases have been reported in Androscoggin (4,593), Aroostook (1,221), Cumberland (11,934), Franklin (866), Hancock (847), Kennebec (3,453), Knox (603), Lincoln (539), Oxford (2,111), Penobscot (3,674), Piscataquis (241), Sagadahoc (847), Somerset (1,205), Waldo (562), Washington (691) and York (9,032) counties.
As of Saturday morning, the coronavirus had sickened 27,492,955 people in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as caused 480,902 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine.