Maine CDC reports 2 deaths, 23 new cases of coronavirus

The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported 23 new cases of the new coronavirus and two deaths Saturday, increasing the totals during a holiday weekend where Maine is expected to see a strengthened mandate to wear masks in public.

The total number of cases in Maine during the pandemic increased to 3,397, where 3,012 cases have been confirmed by tests and another 385 are considered probable cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

One hundred and seven people have died. The people reported dead Saturday were a man in his 80s and a woman in their 60s, both from Cumberland County, the Maine CDC said.

Subtracting the number of people who recovered (2,751) and died, there were 539 active cases on Saturday.

Many Independence Day events across the state have been canceled for fear of coronavirus transmission, and Governor Janet Mills is soon expected to issue an executive order forcing companies to enforce mask-wearing policies for customers. .

Mills said the masks are essential to contain the spread of the virus. The virus is transmitted through water droplets expelled from the human respiratory system, and masks can help retain them. Despite well-publicized resistance to masks in other states, Mills said he thought Mainers could get used to wearing them.

“It is the same as saying, ‘No shirt, no service, no shoes, no service,'” Mills said Wednesday. “They are just the rules of the game.”

Mills’ announcement this week also came with the news that visitors to Connecticut, New York and New Jersey will not have to kidnap themselves under a 14-day quarantine or provide evidence of a negative COVID-19 test.

Those states join New Hampshire and Vermont on the list of places Maine public health officials consider safer. Metrics like the prevalence of the virus, the number of hospitalizations, and the ability to assess and track COVID-19 guide these decisions, officials said.

Notably absent from the list is Massachusetts, a source of concern for business owners who depend on Bay State visitors to support them in the summer.

Meanwhile, new data provided by the Maine CDC suggests that an increasing number of out-of-state visitors are testing positive for COVID-19. Tracking new cases among non-residents can be challenging, because the Maine CDC refers those cases to the states of origin of the patients, and still can conduct its own contact tracking investigation of the patient’s activities in Maine.

County by county, there were 494 cases in Androscoggin, 24 in Aroostook, 1,793 in Cumberland, 40 in Franklin, 17 in Hancock, 146 in Kennebec, 25 in Knox, 24 in Lincoln, 42 in Oxford, 114 in Penobscot, three in Piscataquis, 34 in Sagadahoc, 30 in Somerset, 56 in Waldo, three in Washington and 549 in York.

By age, only 8.2 percent of patients were under 20 years old, while 15.3 percent were between 20 and 15 years old, 15.4 percent were 30 years old, 15.6 percent were 40, 16.5 percent were 50, 11.7 percent were 60, 8.3 percent were over 70 years old, and 8.8 percent were 80 years or older.

Women are still the majority of cases, at just under 52 percent.

Maine hospitals had 27 patients with COVID-19, which has been fairly stable in recent weeks. Of those patients, nine were in intensive care and three were on ventilators.

State hospitals had 152 intensive care beds available from a total of 397 and 257 ventilators available from 316. There were also 444 alternative ventilators.

Worldwide on Saturday, there were 11 million cases of COVID-19 and 530,000 deaths. The United States had 2.9 million cases and 132,000 deaths.

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