State reports 172 new COVID-19 cases over 3 days

State health officials reported 172 new cases of COVID-19 for the three-day period from Saturday to Monday, adding to an increasing level of transmission of new viruses.

An additional death was also reported on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to reverse their previous guidelines and recommend that some vaccinated people resume wearing masks indoors, The New York Times and others have reported. This group should include those who live with or have close contact with immunocompromised or unvaccinated people, including children under 12 years of age.

The CDC has recommended for months that unvaccinated people continue to wear masks in crowded public places, but no one is enforcing this policy and masks have become increasingly rare.

Maine’s new COVID-19 cases include cases for Saturday, Sunday and Monday, as the state no longer processes tests on weekends but reports results on Tuesday. The new figure continues an upward trend. The seven-day daily case average, which has been rising steadily for about a month, now stands at 64 cases after hitting a low of around 14 cases on average earlier in the month. The number of cases is far higher than it was last summer, when people were more cautious of large gatherings and wore masks in many public places.

The same trend is playing out across the country and is even worse in some areas where the highly transmissible delta variant has taken hold. The seven-day average in the United States is around 42,000 cases, up from 12,000 cases at the same time last month. Some states, such as Florida, are particularly affected.

Of the new cases reported in Maine on Tuesday, 46 were in Cumberland County, which is also the county with the highest vaccination rate. But Cumberland County also has the most people, so even though its vaccination rate is 72 percent, there are still 84,000 people who have yet to be vaccinated.

Since the start of the pandemic, there have been 70,076 confirmed or probable cases of COVID-19 and 898 deaths, according to data tracked by the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Hospitalizations – which were stable – also started to rise. As of Tuesday, there were 33 people in hospital with COVID-19, an increase from eight just last week. Of these, 18 were in intensive care.

Vaccinations, meanwhile, have slowed considerably, although there are small signs that demand could increase. In total, Maine administered 807,540 final doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, covering just over 60% of all residents and about 68% of eligible residents aged 12 and over.

For the week ending Saturday, July 24, Maine recorded an average of 1,299 hits per day, which is an increase from the 1,164 hits per day on average for the previous week.

Despite the high vaccination rate in Maine overall, many areas of the state are lagging behind. While Cumberland County has vaccinated 72 percent of residents, nine counties have rates below 55 percent, including two – Somerset and Piscataquis – which still have not reached 50 percent.

Geographical disparities are even more marked in rural areas. Among those aged 16 to 39, 70% of people in Cumberland County have been fully vaccinated, which is close to the overall rate. However, in five predominantly rural counties – Somerset, Piscataquis, Franklin, Washington and Oxford – the rate among 16-39 year olds is less than 40%.

Public health officials continue to stress the importance of vaccinations, though reluctance has turned into hostility for some. The overwhelming majority of all new deaths and hospitalizations from COVID-19 have been in unvaccinated people.

This story will be updated.

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