State reports 636 new cases of COVID-19, 4 more deaths

The director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr Nirav Shah, explained Thursday that the recent model depends on when people are tested. Others are underway for testing on Monday or Tuesday, yielding results – and subsequently more cases – Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, he said. He said the broader seven- or 14-day trends are more important than those fluctuations. At the moment, the picture is not clear, although there is some glimmer. Maine’s testing positivity declined 5.9% to 3.9 over the past two weeks, an incubation period, in part due to an increase in test volume.

“There are signs on the horizon, for example, that because testing has expanded, which has lowered our positivity rate, we’re going to be better able to detect more cases. It’s a good thing, ”he says. “I will say that I remain concerned about the number of hospitalizations, especially the increase in the number of individuals who are in the intensive care unit.

Hospitalizations increased from 8 to 190 on Friday, including 61 in intensive care and 19 on a ventilator. Since the start of the pandemic, 1,309 people have been hospitalized in Maine at one time with COVID-19. So far in 2021, hospitalizations have remained consistently high, dropping from a low of 180 on January 3 to a high of 207 on January 13. The number of patients in intensive care units has not fallen below 50 since January 3.

Overall, there have been 36,274 confirmed or probable cases and 540 deaths in Maine since the pandemic struck 10 months ago. The total number of cases has doubled in just over a month. The number of deaths has more than tripled in the past two months, just before Thanksgiving.

Worrisome trends in cases, hospitalizations and deaths continue as more Mainers get vaccinated, though these efforts have been hampered by limited supply. As of Friday, 78,395 people had received at least one dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine and 19,876 people had received both doses. Since the first dose was given on December 15, the state has averaged about 2,500 injections per day. It is not known how many of each were health workers, first responders or residents and staff of long-term care facilities – the categories in phase 1A of the state’s immunization plan. .

Supply remains the biggest obstacle. Next week’s vaccine dose shipment to Maine is about 1,000 less than this week, even as hospitals and health organizations prepare to speed up vaccination of Mainers 70 and older, leading to marks the start of phase 1B. MaineHealth on Thursday announced plans to open a mass vaccination site in Scarborough Downs, although it may still be weeks before enough vaccines make it possible. Other sites are also under discussion.

“We hope that very soon we can continue to expand our distribution sites, in rural Maine and smaller sites,” Maine Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner Jeanne Lambrew said in response. to concerns raised by independent practitioners who felt excluded from the conversation.

Of the 17,575 doses expected to arrive in Maine next week, 10,900 will go to hospitals, with four facilities – Maine Medical Center in Portland, Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, MaineGeneral Medical Center in Augusta, and Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston – representing 8,400, or 77 percent, of hospital doses.

Another 3,575 doses will go to outpatient clinics including Martin’s Point, InterMed and Penobscot Community Health Care in Bangor to begin vaccinating older residents.

In particular, no dose is directed to the drugstore chains RiteAid and Walgreens, which run vaccination clinics for staff and residents of long-term care facilities. State officials said they had suspended sending additional vaccines to the U.S. CDC-run retail pharmacy program because it had sufficient doses. Instead, 2,900 doses will be administered at 14 independent pharmacies.

Some health organizations already have to sort their limited doses of vaccines.

Dan Loiselle, chief medical officer of InterMed, a large private physician-owned practice that serves southern Maine, said in a message to patients Friday morning that he “is focusing our vaccination efforts on 80-year-old patients and more, especially those with a health condition that puts them at increased risk for serious complications from COVID. “

The supply InterMed received this week, Loiselle wrote, is less than a third of what is needed to vaccinate patients 80 and older.

“We also ask that you do not call or send emails with questions about vaccine availability so that our phone lines can be free for patients who call with acute medical problems,” he said. declared.

Thursday was exactly one year after the detection of the first case of COVID-19 in the United States. Since then, there have been nearly 25 million cases and more than 400,000 people have died from the virus – by far most of all countries.

This story will be updated.

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