Non-resident COVID-19 cases in Maine remain low

A group from Massachusetts at Old Orchard Beach in late June. Ben McCanna / Staff Photographer

As Maine approaches the peak summer tourism season, the number of people who do not test positive for COVID-19 here has remained stable at a low level, according to data from hospital laboratories and the Centers. of Disease Control and Prevention of Maine.

In the nine days ending July 18, the CDC of Maine referred nine nonresident cases to other states, or one per day, an average of 1.4 cases per day in the 21 days ending July 9, the last time the agency revealed this metric. Between May 11 and June 19, the figure had been 0.6 cases per day. States generally refer infectious disease cases involving non-residents to their home state authorities with the expectation that they will take over contact tracing and other aspects of the case.

In a separate metric: the number of positive non-resident tests performed – Agency data shows a flat trend line this month. As of July 18, 133 such cases had been reported, compared to 120 on July 9 and 107 on June 30, a trend of 0.7 cases per day in both periods. The main distinction between the two metrics is that one measures the number of tests performed and multiple tests can be performed on the same individual.

In comparison, the CDC of Maine reported that 381 Mainers had tested positive between July 1 and July 18, meaning nonresidents accounted for 6.4 percent of COVID-19 testing positive here during that period.

Hospital systems contacted by the Press Herald reported broadly similar trends, an encouraging sign that residents of Mainers and other states may be controlling the spread of the disease by complying with the use of masks and social distancing measures, even when the pandemic is unleashed. in the southern and southwestern United States, overwhelming intensive care units and triggering the deployment of refrigerated morgue trucks.

Northern Light Health, which operates 39 primary care offices and 10 hospitals, including Mercy in Portland and Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, had 23 positive nonresident results as of July 16, up from June 30, 18, an increase in five out of 348 nonresident tests performed, or 1.48 percent positivity. The positivity rate for the 634 nonresident tests that had been performed as of June 30 was 2.83 percent.

Mount Desert Island Hospital in Bar Harbor has been at the center of a community-wide effort to regularly screen hundreds of front-line tourism workers, such as cashiers, hotel employees, and servers, as well as tourists. They haven’t had a positive result from residents or non-residents since May 16, spokesman Oka Hutchins said by email Monday, and only five positive results of any kind since the pandemic began, out of more than 1,000 tests conducted.

MaineHealth, the state’s largest hospital network, which includes NorDx Labs and Maine Medical Center as members, declined to share their test numbers, citing patient privacy. But Dr. Dora Anne Mills, the network’s director of health improvements, said Friday that they had seen a rebound in the past two weeks, with about five to 10 positive results for non-residents, but no indication of a linked outbreak. to visitors from other states. .

“It certainly is worth observing and monitoring to see what happens as the virus is on fire in the rest of the country outside of New England and the Northeast,” said Mills, a former director of the Maine CDC and sister of Governor Janet Mills. “The virus sees no borders, and with increased travel from outside Maine, they are like sparks. Are they enough to start a wave? We do not know.

Maine has remained an oasis amid the deteriorating pandemic situation in the United States and on Monday was one of only two states to post a seven-day downward trend in cases on a widely followed tracker in The New York Times. But the state is especially vulnerable to out-of-state infection vectors, as tourism is its largest industry and the state has the highest proportion of vacation homes in the country with 19 percent of the housing stock.

The geographic origins of non-resident COVID-19 infections appear to have changed in the past month. As of June 19, when Maine had transferred a total of 81 COVID-19 investigations to health authorities in other states, most were from New Hampshire (with 23 of those cases) and Massachusetts (with 19). But in the July 18 update provided to the Press Herald, Massachusetts accounted for just five of the 39 new cases, while New Hampshire’s count actually dropped by one, due to a data correction. New York, which had not previously been broken down, had accumulated a total of 17 cases since the infection began, according to Maine CDC spokesman Robert Long, who had no comparable figures available for the two previous reporting periods.

Long did not respond to a request for comment from Maine CDC Director Dr. Nirav Shah on trends in nonresidents, but he did email that the agency “would strive” to publish nonresident data weekly, although this will not follow a fixed schedule. “The day of the week may vary, depending on staff availability,” he added.

Two other states with large numbers of seasonal residents, Hawaii and Florida, have published information on nonresident cases daily since the first weeks of the pandemic. Maine, by contrast, has not disclosed this information on any regular schedule and only started doing so at all on April 9, the morning after the Press Herald requested the information.

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