Maine reported 24 cases of the novel coronavirus and no new deaths on Sunday, preserving the state’s trend of low case numbers and hospitalizations as the virus rebounds in other states.
Maine’s cumulative cases rose to 3,814, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Of those cases, 3,408 have been confirmed by testing and 406 are considered probable cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
One hundred nineteen people have died with COVID-19 in Maine.
Subtracting numbers of people who have recovered – 3,284 – and died, there were 411 active cases on Sunday.
Hospitalizations with COVID-19 remained low across Maine on Sunday, at 14 patients. Compared to rising numbers elsewhere in the country, Maine’s hospitalization rates have been especially low; last week, some Maine hospitals reported their lowest numbers of patients since the beginning of the pandemic.
Still, some health providers who use national labs to process their COVID-19 tests are reporting significant delays because of increased demand on those labs from other parts of the country.
A Maine company is also setting the standard in its response to a COVID-19 outbreak, the Maine CDC says. Even before positive test results arrived from their employees recently, the owners of American Roots, a clothing manufacturer in Westbrook, were calling the Maine CDC and scheduling universal testing.
The director of the Maine CDC, Dr. Nirav Shah, said the speed of the company’s response, combined with mask-wearing policies and the quick quarantining of employees who had contact with those infected, should set a “standard” for businesses with outbreaks of COVID-19.
County by county since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been 534 cases in Androscoggin, 31 in Aroostook, 2,011 in Cumberland, 46 in Franklin, 19 in Hancock, 158 in Kennebec, 25 in Knox, 33 in Lincoln, 49 in Oxford, 139 in Penobscot, three in Piscataquis, 43 in Sagadahoc, 34 in Somerset, 60 in Waldo, seven in Washington, and 621 in York.
By age, 8.9 percent of patients were under 20, while 16.1 percent were in their 20s, 15.4 percent were in their 30s, 15.3 percent were in their 40s, 16.3 percent were in their 50s, 11.5 percent were in their 60s, 8.1 percent were in their 70s, and 8.3 percent were 80 or over.
Women still are the slight majority of cases, at just over 52 percent.
Of the 14 patients with COVID-19 in Maine hospitals on Sunday, 10 were in intensive care and three were on ventilators. The state had 134 intensive care unit beds available of 399, and 258 ventilators available of 318. Maine also had 441 alternative ventilators.
Around the world late Sunday afternoon, there were 16.1 million known cases of COVID-19 and nearly 647,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. The United States had over 4.2 million cases and nearly 147,000 deaths.
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