Maine recorded six new deaths from the coronavirus on Saturday and 617 new cases.
Saturday’s report raises the total number of coronavirus cases in Maine to 29,019, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. That is more than 28,407 on Friday.
Of these, 24,218 were confirmed as positive, while 4,801 were classified as “probable cases”, reported the Maine CDC.
Deaths reported on Saturday bring the death toll across the state to 432. Almost all deaths occurred in Mainers over the age of 60.
Saturday’s report is the eighth time in the past 11 days that new cases have surpassed 400 and the fifth time this week when they have reached 500.
This occurs as the high transmission of the virus continues its outbreak for months, bringing high levels of transmission in the community, which the Maine CDC defines as a rate of 16 or more cases per 10,000 people, even for counties previously 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, 1,158 Maine residents have been hospitalized at some point with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. As of Friday, 205 were hospitalized, 56 in intensive care and 26 in ventilators.
As of Friday, 43,362 inhabitants of the continent have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine, while another 3,271 have received two doses.
Most cases – 17,361 – 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 Friday, there were 1,251,474 negative test results out of 1,286,695 overall. Almost 2.7 percent of all tests were positive, data from the Maine CDC show.
Coronavirus hit most heavily in Cumberland County, where 8,552 cases were reported and where most virus deaths – 111 – were concentrated. Other cases have been reported in Androscoggin (3,109), Aroostook (827), Franklin (514), Hancock (619), Kennebec (2,153), Knox (412), Lincoln (355), Oxford (1,305), Penobscot (2,538), Piscataquis (141), Sagadahoc (502), Somerset (847), Waldo (401), Washington (425) and York (6,308) counties. Information on where 11 additional cases were reported was not immediately available.
As of Saturday morning, the coronavirus had made 21,872,264 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 368,947 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University of Medicine.