Maine hospitals have less than 200 COVID patients for the first time in almost 3 weeks

The number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 in Maine on Monday fell below 200 for the first time in 18 days, a small sign that the surge fueled by the delta variant may be receding.

Of the 192 who are currently in a hospital with the virus, 61 are in intensive care, the lowest total in a month, and 21 are on ventilators, the lowest since mid-August.

Although hospitalizations have declined steadily from a pandemic peak of 235 on September 25, they remain at a high level and many hospitals in the state are still under stress.

Nonetheless, the director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr Nirav Shah, said on Monday that the decrease could be a sign of better days to come. He said many states ravaged by the delta variant in early summer saw signs of improvement.

The number of hospitalizations nationwide has fallen to about 76,000 on average, from just over 100,000 at the same time last month, according to the New York Times.

Cases have also started to decline. On Saturday, the seven-day average of new cases in the United States was just over 100,000, down 28% from 138,000 on average two weeks earlier, according to the US CDC.

“Hopefully easing will catch on in Maine,” Shah said on “Maine Calling,” the Maine Public calling radio show.

But Shah also pointed out that Maine still has a high degree of control over what goes on, and he said that “the most important factor is the number of people vaccinated.”

Maine hospital executives are not yet happy with the drop.

Dr David McDermott, vice president of medical affairs at two Northern Light hospitals in Piscataquis County, said the slight decrease in hospitalizations for COVID-19 made him “cautiously optimistic but not yet breathing a sigh of relief.” The reason for this, he said, is that official numbers don’t tell the whole story.

“We still see a huge demand for hospital care,” McDermott explained. “We have patients here who are in the hospital and have been hospitalized with COVID but are no longer considered active cases. Even though they are not counted in our number, they are too weak to return to a level of care home. They need skilled rehabilitation or a nursing home, and there are simply no patient homes. It creates a bottleneck here.

John Porter, spokesperson for MaineHealth, the parent organization of Maine Medical Center in Portland and seven other hospitals in Maine, said that although the number of hospitalizations is down slightly, the big unknown for the winter is whether cases and hospitalizations will decrease this winter, or if there will be another peak like there was last winter.

“It’s a bit subdued right now, but it’s not yet a clear downtrend,” Porter said.

In the MaineHealth and Northern Light Health systems, unvaccinated people are more likely to be hospitalized and much more likely to need intensive care, although the numbers fluctuate somewhat from week to week. State officials said that in MaineHealth hospitals, all but two of the 28 people, currently in intensive care, are not vaccinated. In Northern Light’s system, eight of 16 people in intensive care are unvaccinated, while just three weeks ago, 25 of 27 were unvaccinated.

McDermott said that in almost all cases, fully vaccinated people who end up in hospital with COVID-19 are older and have other health issues.

Despite the recent drop in cases and hospitalizations, the United States recently passed a grim milestone: 700,000 deaths attributed to the virus since it reached the country in early 2020. Among them, 1,026 residents of Maine. The state has one of the lowest per capita totals in the country.

The Maine CDC reported two more COVID-related deaths over the weekend, including a Cumberland County resident and a Kennebec County resident. One was a woman and the other was a man. One was between 50 and 59 and the other was 80 or older.

The new COVID-19 case count for Maine was not available on Monday as the state no longer processes testing over the weekend. On Tuesday, the Maine CDC will release the number of new cases detected on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. The CDC has also faced a significant backlog of testing in recent weeks, which has made it difficult to determine the number of new cases on any given day.

On Saturday, the seven-day daily average of cases stood at 612, which is close to the state maximum set in mid-January during the winter wave, before most people were eligible for them. vaccinations. Two weeks ago the average number of daily cases was 485, and this time last month it was 370.

Shah said the delta variant has made its way across the country. “Unfortunately, the North East is taking its turn in the hot seat,” he said. However, he also noted that Maine’s positivity rate – the percentage of all COVID-19 tests that come back positive – has declined to 4.3% from 4.75% two weeks ago.

Some neighboring states are already seeing cases start to decline. In Massachusetts, the seven-day average fell from 1,966 to 1,538 in two weeks, according to the US CDC. In Connecticut, cases have increased from an average of 777 to 476. Of the New England states, only Maine and New Hampshire are still seeing the number of cases rise.

Shah was asked Monday why Connecticut, where the vaccination rate is similar to that of Maine, is seeing its cases drop faster. He explained that Connecticut’s vaccination rate doesn’t vary much from region to region. In Maine, however, many rural counties have much lower vaccination rates than Cumberland County, for example.

Editor-in-chief Joe Lawlor contributed to this story

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