The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention on Saturday reported 30 cases of the novel coronavirus and one additional death at the Maplecrest nursing home in Madison, ending a week where case numbers spiked in connection with outbreaks in York and Oxford counties.
Sixteen cases had been detected at the ND Paper mill in Rumford as of Friday. In York County, the superintendent of schools in Sanford moved Sanford High School and the Sanford Regional Technical Center to distance learning for all students after a person connected with the high school tested positive.
Maine’s cumulative cases rose to 5,035 on Saturday. Of those, 4,522 have been confirmed by testing and 513 are considered probable cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
One hundred thirty-nine people have died with COVID-19 in Maine. The person reported Saturday to have died was a man in his 80s from Somerset County and a resident of the Maplecrest Rehabilitation and Living Center in Madison, the Maine CDC said. There now have been seven deaths at the facility, where 39 staff and residents had tested positive as of Friday.
The outbreak at Maplecrest has been linked to a super-spreading event at a wedding and reception in the Katahdin area that has led to at least 177 cases and now eight deaths, counting the fatality reported Saturday, according to The Associated Press.
Subtracting the number of people who have recovered – 4,346 – and died, there were 550 active cases on Saturday.
A rash of outbreaks in York County has driven case numbers higher in recent weeks. More outbreaks were reported this past week, including three cases at Baker Co. in Sanford and four cases at the Elks Lodge in Sanford.
As of Friday, case counts had grown at other Sanford social clubs. There were 12 cases at the American Legion, 10 at the Lafayette Social Club and 10 at the Sanford VFW.
An Aug. 31 funeral reception at the Sanford American Legion is believed to be the source of that outbreak, but the others remain under investigation.
Also on Friday, Inland Hospital in Waterville quarantined 10 members of its staff who came into contact with a patient later discovered to have COVID-19.
The hospital, part of the 10-hospital Northern Light Health network, declined to give further details, including any information on how so many employees were potentially exposed.
The University of Maine System, meanwhile, is still reporting no active cases of COVID-19. There were no cases across the system’s eight schools on Friday, either, university officials said in their daily update on Saturday. The university system had conducted 15,233 tests as of Saturday, 13 of which had positive results representing new diagnoses of COVID-19. All 13 of those patients have since been released from isolation, and their cases aren’t considered active, the system said.
County by county in Maine since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been 674 COVID-19 cases in Androscoggin, 41 in Aroostook, 2,273 in Cumberland, 58 in Franklin, 53 in Hancock, 205 in Kennebec, 35 in Knox, 39 in Lincoln, 114 in Oxford, 252 in Penobscot, eight in Piscataquis, 64 in Sagadahoc, 85 in Somerset, 73 in Waldo, 15 in Washington, and 1,045 in York.
By age, 10.7 percent of patients were under 20, while 16.9 percent were in their 20s, 15.3 percent were in their 30s, 14.5 percent were in their 40s, 16.3 percent were in their 50s, 11.5 percent were in their 60s, 7.6 percent were in their 70s, and 7.3 percent were 80 or over.
Women still make up a slight majority of cases, at just over 51 percent.
Maine’s hospitals had 14 patients with COVID-19 on Saturday, of whom five were in intensive care and one was on a ventilator. The state had 118 intensive care unit beds available of a total 383, and 250 ventilators available of 317. There were also 444 alternative ventilators.
Around the world on Saturday evening, there were 30.6 million known cases of COVID-19 and more than 953,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. The United States had 6.7 million cases and more than 199,000 deaths.
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