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Another eight Maine residents died while health officials reported on Thursday another 808 cases of coronavirus across the state.
Thursday’s report brings the total number of coronavirus cases in Maine to 31,958, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s 31,150 more on Wednesday.
Of these, 26,334 were confirmed as positive, while 5,624 were classified as “probable cases”, reported the Maine CDC.
One resident of Aroostook County, two residents of Cumberland County, three residents of Penobscot County and two residents of York County succumbed to the virus, bringing the death toll across the state to 461. Almost all deaths occurred in Mainers over 60 years old.
It is the second time in two days that Maine has seen an increase in cases above 800. On Wednesday, Maine saw new cases rise to a new record – 824 – the first time since the pandemic began when they reached more than 800.
Maine’s seven-day average for new coronavirus cases is 622.4, up from 582.1 the previous day, up from 488.4 the previous week and 364.1 the previous month. Before that increase began in late October, Maine’s seven-day average was in its mid-30s.
Maine CDC continues to report widespread high levels of transmission in the community, defined as a case rate of 16 or more per 10,000 people, even in counties that have already been largely spared the worst of the pandemic.
There are two criteria for establishing transmission in the community: at least 10 confirmed cases and that at least 25 percent of them are not linked to known cases or trips.
So far, 1,217 Maine residents have been hospitalized at some point with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. Information on people currently hospitalized was not immediately available.
Most cases – 19,064 – occurred in Mainers under the age of 50, while more cases were reported in women than in men, according to the Maine CDC.
As of Wednesday, there were 1,301,674 negative test results out of 1,340,121 in total. About 2.8 percent of all tests were positive, show the most recent data available from the Maine CDC.
Coronavirus hit most heavily in Cumberland County, where 9,436 cases were reported and where most virus deaths – 117 – were concentrated. Other cases have been reported in Androscoggin (3,462), Aroostook (951), Franklin (545), Hancock (659), Kennebec (2,383), Knox (462), Lincoln (378), Oxford (1,485), Penobscot (3,696), Piscataquis (152), Sagadahoc (575), Somerset (907), Waldo (415), Washington (466) and York counties (6,973). Information on where 13 additional cases were reported was not immediately available.
As of Thursday morning, the coronavirus had made 23,073,350 people sick in all 50 states, in the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the US Virgin Islands, in addition to causing 384,784 deaths, from according to Johns Hopkins University of Medicine.