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Two other Mainers have died and 24 cases of the new coronavirus have been detected in Maine, health officials said Saturday.
There have now been 3,397 cases in all Maine counties since the outbreak began here in March, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s over 3,373 on Friday.
Of those, 3,012 have been confirmed as positive, while 385 are likely positive, according to the Maine CDC.
New cases were counted in Androscoggin (4), Cumberland (13), Hancock (1), Oxford (2), Penobscot (2), Somerset (1) and York (4) counties.
Two new deaths were reported Saturday, bringing the statewide death toll to 107. Almost all deaths have been in Mainers over the age of 60.
As of Friday, 358 Mainers had been hospitalized at some point with COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Of these, 27 people were currently hospitalized, nine in critical condition and three with ventilators. Hospitals were not required to report new numbers on Saturday due to the July 4 holiday.
Meanwhile, 20 more people have recovered from the coronavirus, bringing the total recoveries to 2,751. That means there are 539 probable and active cases in the state, up from 537 on Friday. Active cases have accelerated in the past week, from 424 on June 24, after falling steadily since late May.
Most cases, 1,853, have been in Mainers under the age of 50, while more cases have been reported in women than men, according to the Maine CDC.
As of Friday, there have been 108,587 negative results out of 113,260 in total. Just over 4 percent of all tests have tested positive, data from the Maine CDC show.
The coronavirus has been the most affected in Cumberland County, where 1,793 cases have been confirmed and where the majority of deaths from the virus, 62, have been concentrated. It is one of four counties: the others are Androscoggin, Penobscot and York, with 494, 114 and 549 cases, respectively, where “community transmission” has been confirmed, according to the Maine CDC.
There are two criteria for establishing community transmission: at least 10 confirmed cases and that at least 25 percent of them are not connected to known cases or travel. That second condition has not yet been “met” in other counties.
Other cases have been detected in Aroostook (24), Franklin (40), Hancock (17), Kennebec (146), Knox (25), Lincoln (24), Oxford (42), Piscataquis (3), Sagadahoc (34) , Somerset (30), Waldo (56) and Washington (3) counties. Information on where three other cases were detected was not immediately available on Saturday morning.
As of Saturday morning, the coronavirus has sickened 2,808,003 people in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and has caused 129,476 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University of Medicine. .
