Maine reported 19 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday and there were no new deaths, continuing a trend that places Maine among the best in the country for its low prevalence rates of COVID-19 despite increased testing.
Overall, Maine has had 3,558 cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic began and 114 deaths, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Fourteen additional Mainers have recovered from the virus, for a total of 3,008 recoveries since the first case was reported here.
Before the crowds arrive Monday morning, a sign encourages visitors to Old Orchard Beach to wear a mask. Shawn Patrick Ouellette / Staff Photographer
The CDC has yet to release updated hospitalization data for Monday, but the overall trend has been a decline in hospitalizations across the state. On Sunday, 19 Mainers were in the hospital with COVID-19, nine in intensive care beds and three on ventilators.
According to experts on the Covid Exit Strategy website, there are several key metrics that public health experts analyze to determine how well a state controls the coronavirus, and Maine is one of only four states in the ” better trend. ” The site is a nonpartisan effort by a group of public health experts with experience working in the public sector, including various United States presidential administrations.
The website analyzes several factors, in addition to the prevalence of viruses, to code the states “green, better trend” to yellow, red and “bruised red”, which means “uncontrolled spread”. The other states that join Maine in the “green” category are new. York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Seventeen states are in the “bruised red” category, including all of the Deep South, Texas, California, Arizona, and Nevada.
Additionally, Maine has the lowest estimated reproductive virus rate in the country at 0.87, according to the rt.live website, a non-partisan, nonprofit site based on data from the Covid Monitoring Project, which collects state and federal COVID-19 numbers. R
With the virus prevailing low, school officials across Maine are studying how to open K-12 schools this fall. It’s a complicated question, but Dr. Dora Anne Mills, vice president of community health for MaineHealth, the parent company of the Maine Medical Center in Portland, published a long blog post on Monday detailing how schools can reopen.
Mills, sister of Governor Janet Mills and former director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, wrote that low case rates and a lack of community transmission are crucial to the reopening of schools.
“The reopening of schools largely depends on the amount of COVID-19 transmission in the state or community,” Mills wrote. “Although there are no clear criteria for the incidence of cases, the positivity rate of the test and / or hospitalization or the incidence of death necessary for schools to reopen safely, experience in other countries indicates that it is School outbreaks are more likely to occur if there is significant community transmission. “
The Maine CDC has said that community broadcasting is occurring in Cumberland, York and Androscoggin counties.
This story will be updated.
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