State reports 636 new COVID-19 cases, 4 additional deaths

Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Nirav Shah explained on Thursday that the recent pattern is a function of when people are testing. More are going into testing on Monday or Tuesday, which produces results – and more cases later – on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, he said. He said that more important than these fluctuations are broader trends over seven or 14 days. At the moment, the image is not clear, although there are some glimpses. The positivity of the Maine test has decreased from 5.9 percent to 3.9 in the past two weeks, or an incubation period, in part due to an increase in test volume.

“There are signs on the horizon, for example, that as the tests have expanded, which has reduced our rate of positivity, we will be better able to detect more cases. This is good, ”he said. “I will say that I am still concerned about the number of hospitalizations, especially with the increase in people who are in the intensive care unit.”

Hospitalizations increased from eight to 190 on Friday, including 61 in intensive care and 19 in a ventilator. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 1,309 individuals have been hospitalized in Maine at some point with COVID-19. So far, in 2021, hospitalizations have remained consistently high, from a minimum of 180 on January 3 to a maximum of 207 on January 13. The number of patients in intensive care units has not dropped 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 number of cases doubled in just over a month. The death toll has more than tripled since two months ago, just before Thanksgiving.

The worrying case, hospitalization and death trends continue as more and more Maine residents are getting vaccines, although these efforts have been hampered by limited supply. On Friday, 78,395 people received at least one dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine and 19,876 people received both doses. Since the first dose was administered on December 15, the state has given an average of about 2,500 injections per day. It is not clear how many of them were health professionals, first responders or residents and employees of long-term care facilities – the categories in Phase 1A of the state’s vaccination plan.

Supply remains the biggest barrier. Sending vaccine doses to Maine next week is about 1,000 fewer than this week, even as hospitals and health organizations are preparing to accelerate the vaccination of Mainers aged 70 or over, which marks the start of the Phase 1B. MaineHealth announced Thursday that it plans to open a mass vaccination site at Scarborough Downs, although it may still be weeks before enough vaccinations make this feasible. Other sites are also under discussion.

“We are hopeful that very soon we will be able to continue to build our distribution sites for rural Maine and smaller locations,” said Maine Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner Jeanne Lambrew in response to concerns raised by professionals independents who felt left out of the conversation.

Of the 17,575 doses due 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 – being responsible for 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 start vaccinating older residents.

Notably, no doses are being directed to the pharmacy chains RiteAid and Walgreens, which run vaccination clinics for employees and residents of long-term care facilities. State officials say they have stopped sending additional vaccines to the US CDC-operated retail pharmacy program because it has sufficient doses. Instead, 2,900 doses will be administered to 14 independent pharmacies.

Some health organizations are already having to screen their limited doses of vaccine.

Dan Loiselle, medical director of InterMed, a large private medical-owned clinic serving southern Maine, said in a message to patients early Friday morning that he is “focusing our vaccination efforts on patients aged 80 and over. , particularly those with a medical condition that puts them at greater risk for serious COVID complications. ”

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

“We also ask that you do not call or email with questions about the availability of the vaccine, so that our phone lines are free for patients who are calling with acute medical conditions,” he said.

Thursday was exactly a year after the first COVID-19 case was detected in the United States. Since then, there have been almost 25 million cases and more than 400,000 people have died from the virus – most from any country, by far.

This story will be updated.

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