Maine surpasses 1,000 COVID-19 deaths

Maine marked a grim milestone on Tuesday, with the state surpassing 1,000 deaths since the pandemic began in March 2020.

The state reported 18 additional deaths and 632 new cases of COVID-19 over a three-day period.

When the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports many deaths in one day, it is usually the result of a periodic review of death certificates dating back several weeks and does not reflect a day’s total.

The 632 cases represent new cases registered on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Since the start of the pandemic, Maine has recorded 84,542 cases of COVID-19 and 1,002 deaths.

The seven-day average of new daily cases stood at 481 on Tuesday, up from 449.7 a week ago and 162.3 a month ago.

Meanwhile, hospitalizations have been rising steadily for weeks and could continue to set new records based on trends in COVID-19 cases, especially in areas with lower vaccination rates. On Sunday, Maine tied the previous record of 207 hospitalizations – set at the peak of the wave last winter when only a fraction of the population had been vaccinated – to surpass it on Monday with 214 hospitalizations.

Dr Nirav Shah, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, called Monday’s figure “another grim record.” Shah also cited a recent study released by the US CDC showing that unvaccinated people in Los Angeles County, California were 29 times more likely to be hospitalized due to COVID-19 than those fully vaccinated at the end. from the study period to the end of the period. July.

“Hospitals are overloaded,” Shah said on Twitter. “If you bet on a bed or an intensive care unit – let alone monoclonal antibodies – as a strategy rather than getting vaccinated, you are miscalculating. “

On the vaccination front, 872,700 people in Maine were fully vaccinated as of Tuesday, representing 64.92 percent of the state’s 1.3 million people. Parents were celebrating a dose of good news on Monday, when Pfizer announced that its vaccine was safe and effective for ages 5 to 11 and that it would soon be submitting data to federal regulators for approval. According to public health experts, elementary school children could get vaccinated before Halloween, depending on how long it takes the Food and Drug Administration to sort the data and give an emergency use authorization.

Once the agreement is reached, approximately 100,000 children in Maine would become eligible for the vaccine, which is currently approved for ages 12 and older.

“I’ll be the one sobbing in relief,” said Christen Cowper, of Gorham, the mother of a 5-year-old boy with poor lung function.

This story will be updated.

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