More than half of Mainers aged 12 to 19 received COVID-19 injections

Warren Edgar, a junior at Portland high school, isn’t surprised that Maine has one of the best teen vaccination rates in the country.

“People I know wanted to be vaccinated when he was released. Lots of people have it right away, ”said Edgar, 16, who received his first injection in May at a site near Maine Mall and is now fully vaccinated. “People wanted to socialize more, to have more schools in person, and we knew that in order to do that we had to get vaccinated. I wanted to get vaccinated to get things back to normal. “

This week, the percentage of Mainers aged 12 to 19 who have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine has reached the 50% threshold. Just under 51% of state residents aged 12 to 19 received at least one dose, and about 47% received a final dose, the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention said on Monday.

While there doesn’t appear to be a national comparison for the 12-19 age group that Maine publishes data on daily, the rollout of vaccines to teens and teens has been much slower at the time. nationwide.

According to data from the Mayo Clinic, only about 14% of the U.S. population under 18 – which includes those under 12 who are not yet eligible for vaccines – have received a first dose of the coronavirus vaccine. Maine’s rate, meanwhile, is 18.2 percent, which is the fifth highest in the country. Vermont leads the country at 24 percent.

Many states have very low adolescent vaccination rates, such as 0.3 percent in Idaho, 5 percent in Louisiana, and 5.3 percent in Alabama.

While Maine’s overall rate is high, there remains a large geographic disparity, both overall and among young people. In Cumberland County, 63% of 12- to 19-year-olds are fully immunized, the best in the state, compared to 28% in Somerset County and 30% in Washington County.

Aside from Cumberland, only Sagadahoc, Knox and Lincoln counties have had more than 50% of their teens vaccinated until Monday.

Amelia Connor-McCoy, 16, a junior at Portland high school, said after a school year of mostly distance learning, she’s had a great summer as she and her friends are vaccinated.

“We can go out and hang around without any worries because we’re all vaccinated,” Connor-McCoy said. She said she was also able to make it to a weeklong summer camp to sleep at the University of Southern Maine for musical theater and go to the Old Port for ice cream without worrying about catch COVID-19.

Amelia Connor-McCoy, 16, shown in Portland High School in May 20 minutes after receiving her second injection of the COVID-19 vaccine, said after a school year of mostly distance learning, she had had a great summer because she and her friends are vaccinated. Brianna Soukup / Staff Photographer

Luna Ulrich, 15, a sophomore student at John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor, is also happy to be back in her social life. She was able to go out with friends, go shopping and enjoy simple pleasures like playing mini-golf.

“I did next to nothing for a year,” Ulrich said. “It’s cool to know that I’m in good condition.”

Maine’s overall immunization coverage is the third highest in the country for the percentage of its total population fully vaccinated, behind Vermont and Massachusetts, according to the Bloomberg News vaccine tracker.

The state also continues to promote pop-up immunization clinics statewide. Multicultural Community and Family Support Services in Lewiston put it on a Sunday which was also ice cream night. When school resumes in the fall, there may be opportunities to have clinics on site.

Maine Governor Janet Mills, a Democrat, has touted the state’s vaccination effort and that’s one of the reasons she allowed the state of emergency to expire last month.

“We have been uplifted by the courage, conviction and resilience that comes from loving a place and its people,” she said in a statement.

While the state’s vaccination rate is high, cases of the virus have recently emerged, as they have across the country, with the delta variant fueling the increase. The seven-day moving average of daily new cases in Maine has increased over the past two weeks, from 20.57 on July 3 to 36.57 new cases per day on July 17.

But despite the rise, Maine and much of New England are experiencing much lower rates of the virus than most of the country. Maine’s case rate of 2.8 cases per 100,000 population is the sixth lowest in the country, according to the Harvard Global Health Institute.

In contrast, states with much lower vaccination rates are experiencing peaks. Florida, Arkansas, Missouri, and Louisiana have rates more than 10 times higher than Maine. Florida is the worst in the country, with 49.3 cases per 100,000 population.

The Maine CDC reported on Monday that more than 69,000 positive coronavirus cases have been reported in the state since the start of the pandemic. There were also 882 deaths.

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