Yet a steady stream of customers made their way to opening day of the new season at Butterfield’s Ice Cream in Dover-Foxcroft for a hearty scoop of the iconic parlor’s handmade, hard-serve ice cream -- perhaps as a cool change of pace from recent daily routines fraught with COVID-19 concerns.

Maine has become one of at least a dozen states that are beginning to ease restrictions on businesses in rural areas with fewer cases of the coronavirus while many rules will be in place in more heavily populated areas until June.

A group of Maine business owners on Friday sued Gov. Janet Mills over her unprecedented shutdown orders to limit the spread of the coronavirus claiming they are unconstitutional.

Gov. Janet Mills announced on Friday a rural reopening plan aimed at reopening certain additional businesses in rural Maine over the course of the next two weeks with added health and safety measures. The plan comes after Mills stated last week that her administration was considering opportunities for regional variation as part of its Restarting Maine’s Economy plan.

A testing acquisition the governor described as a “game changer” could help Maine hit goals outlined by health officials as benchmarks for economic reopening, though effects on summer tourism are less clear and the state has performed fewer tests than most on a per-capita basis.

While the full extent of the economic impact that Moore -- who had expanded his business’ Maine Maple Sunday activities into a weekend-long event in recent years -- and approximately 100 other licensed sugarhouses around Maine will face from the cancellation of the open houses isn’t yet known, it’s likely to take a big bite out of maple syrup consumption this year.

Bath Iron Works has signed a contract with a Guilford company to deliver machines needed to ramp up its production of testing swabs used to detect the new coronavirus. The Bath shipyard will deliver 30 machines to provide sterile packaging for Puritan Medical Products’ testing swabs, according to a company statement.

Following a month and a half of remote learning for students and staff during the COVID-19 pandemic, this method of instruction will continue for about four more weeks as the SAD 46 school board approved Friday, June 5 as the final remote learning day of 2019-20 during a May 6 meeting conducted via Zoom.

So while the 75-year-old Mayo practices all of that to protect herself, she’s also helping others wage a similar battle against the coronavirus by spending much of her free time at her sewing machine creating protective face coverings.

Gov. Janet Mills announced that she is convening an Economic Recovery Committee charged with developing recommendations to mitigate the damage to Maine’s economy caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and to jumpstart a long-term economic recovery for Maine people, businesses, and organizations.

Maine began to reopen businesses faster than most other states amid the coronavirus outbreak, but public pressure on Gov. Janet Mills has focused on sectors most sensitive to the summer tourist season as changing plans begin to roll out across the country.

In early April, the Department of Education delivered 500 internet-enabled tablets to schools in Piscataquis County made possible through donations.

The organization that represents landowners who control more than 3.5 million acres of Maine forest have reopened those lands to day use, and hopes to reopen primitive camping sites to Maine residents beginning June 1.

For four hours each weekday, 25-year-old Matt Dexter stands beneath a white pop-up tent in Brewer, fulfilling the labor of love that he started six years ago. He waits for cancer patients, referred to him by social workers at the nearby Lafayette Family Cancer Center, to drop by. Then he asks them what kind of groceries they might like, and fills a cardboard box for them to take home.

Democratic candidate Margarita Contreni announced her candidacy for the Maine House of Representatives for District 119. The district includes the unorganized territories of Northeast and Northwest Piscataquis; Barnard, Blanchard and Elliottsville townships; and the towns of Abbot, Beaver Cove, Bowerbank, Greenville, Greenville Junction, Guilford, Monson, Parkman, Sangerville, Sebec, Shirley and Willimantic.

Puritan is one of the world’s top two makers of the specialized swabs that are used to collect samples from people’s nasal cavities so that they can be tested for the coronavirus that has now infected more than 1 million Americans, including at least 60,000 who have died. That flurry of outreach to the manufacturer has now led to a federal contract worth up to $75.5 million, which will help it to rapidly grow into a new Pittsfield facility and staff it with at least 150 additional workers, according to Wellman. 

The Eastern Area Agency on Aging has experienced a significant increase in demand for its Meals on Wheels program since the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in Maine. Meals on Wheels volunteers delivered 10,897 meals to older residents of Penobscot, Piscataquis, Hancock and Washington counties in March compared to 8,192 in February -- a 25 percent month-to-month increase.

Minority Republicans in the Maine Legislature want to reconvene and end the coronavirus state of emergency declared by Gov. Janet Mills, which would allow all businesses to reopen but would require unlikely Democratic support.