Maine Reports 359 New Cases of COVID-19, As Vaccination Pace Accelerates

Maine is stepping up the pace of COVID-19 vaccinations and reported a new daily record Friday with 8,827 injections administered, according to the Maine Department of Health and Human Services.

The previous record was Thursday, with 7,584 first and second doses administered. Maine had typically administered around 2,000 to 5,000 doses per day over the past few weeks.

The state reported 359 new cases of COVID-19 and three additional deaths on Friday.

In addition, the Maine Department of Education has announced updates to the state’s color-coded school reopening notices, including moving Cumberland County from a “yellow” to “green” designation. .

Overall, Maine administered 137,531 injections of the COVID-19 vaccine, including 102,773 first doses and 34,758 second doses. This means that 7.6% of the population received a first dose and 2.5% a second dose.

As supplies remain tight, the Biden administration has announced that states will receive 16% more doses starting next week, for the next three weeks. For Maine, that means next week the state will receive 20,375 doses, an increase of 2,800 doses from the week before.

As of Thursday, Maine had the eighth-highest percentage of doses administered per 100 people in the United States, according to the Bloomberg News vaccine tracker, with 9.57 doses administered per 100 people. Alaska was at the top of the country at 15.09, while the national average was 8.3 doses per 100 people.

The rollout of the vaccination program continues to accelerate, with the Biden administration announcing that the Federal Emergency Management Agency will help establish mass vaccination sites.

The green designation given to schools in Cumberland County by the DOE means the risk of the spread of COVID-19 is relatively low and schools may consider in-person instruction. A yellow designation means there is a high risk of the spread of COVID-19 and a hybrid instruction is recommended.

For most of the school year, the yellow designation also meant that athletic teams could not practice or compete in interschool competition, but the Maine Principals’ Association announced last week that the policy would change and the designations of color would only apply to in-person learning and not at school. activity-based activities. Most school districts in Maine offer hybrid education, regardless of the color designation, due to their ability to comply with safety requirements.

Three counties in Maine, Androscoggin, Oxford and York, remain yellow due to 14-day new case rates and higher than state average positivity rates. A fourth county, Franklin, was added to the list of “yellow” counties on Friday.

As of Thursday, more than 700 cases of COVID-19 had been reported in schools across Maine over the past 30 days and dozens of outbreak investigations were open. Still, the Maine Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services said on Friday that transmission of the virus in schools remains low compared to the general population.

In the past 30 days, the rate of new cases is 34 per 10,000 staff and students, compared to 116 per 10,000 statewide. This represents a rate of new cases in schools 30 percent lower than the statewide rate for the general population, according to the DOE.

Maine on Thursday launched its expanded COVID-19 vaccination dashboard, showing who has received vaccines by age, race, gender and county of residence.

The daily case count is another day of relatively lower cases compared to the beginning and mid-January, when counts often exceeded 600 per day. The 284 new cases reported Thursday were the lowest weekday figure in a month. The number of cases is generally higher during the week and lower on weekends, as people are more likely to get tested on weekdays.

The seven-day positivity rate for molecular tests was 3.64% on Thursday, down from 5.89% on Dec. 31. When fewer tests are returned with positive results, this indicates there is less COVID- 19 not detected, and this gives public health officials a better chance of controlling the virus by quarantining a higher percentage of those who may be contagious.

When Maine had a summer and early fall case count of about 30 cases per day, the positivity rate was around 0.5 percent.

Gov. Janet Mills lifted a pandemic requirement on Thursday that restaurants close for indoor dining at 9 p.m. due to positive trends in cases.

“We are starting to turn the corner on the post-vacation COVID-19 surge,” Mills said. “With these improved public health indicators, and with the holidays behind us, it is appropriate to remove the early closing time requirement.”

Overall, Maine has recorded 38,813 cases of COVID-19 and 570 deaths, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

This story will be updated.

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