The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention on Saturday reported 70 new cases of COVID-19 and six additional deaths, continuing a virus uptick that doesn’t account for the presence of the highly transmissible “delta” variant in the U.S.
The state’s seven-day average of new daily cases rose to 70, a few days after Maine recorded its first daily count over 100 in more than a month. The virus is surging across the country thanks to the delta variant, but Dr. Nirav Shah, director of the Maine CDC, said this week that the more transmissible version of COVID-19 doesn’t yet appear to be driving the bulk of new cases.
Maine’s cumulative COVID-19 cases rose to 69,904 on Saturday. Of those, 51,055 have been confirmed by testing and 18,849 are considered probable cases of COVID-19. The 14-day average was 50.2 daily cases.
Eight hundred ninety-seven people have died with COVID-19 in Maine since the pandemic began. Information about the six people reported Saturday to have died wasn’t available from the Maine CDC on Saturday morning.
New vaccinations, meanwhile, have slowed. Among people 12 and older, the population currently eligible for vaccination, 68.08 percent are now fully vaccinated, compared to 67.66 percent a week ago. By Saturday morning, Maine had given 806,182 people the final dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
The immunization rate for young adults is lagging, with only 51 percent of people in their 20s fully vaccinated around the state. In some rural counties, the rate is even lower; Piscataquis, Somerset and Washington counties have vaccinated fewer than a third of people in their 20s.
The vaccination lag means that people hospitalized with COVID-19 are younger in Maine. On Friday, the average age of COVID-19 hospital patients was 57, compared to 72 in January, Shah tweeted.
“As older Mainers have been vaccinated, the virus is infecting a younger population,” he said.
Stat of the day: the mean age of those hospitalized w/#COVID19 in #Maine is 57.
In January '21, the mean age was 72. As older Mainers have been vaccinated, the virus is infecting a younger population.
Good news: hospitalizations are down overall this year. pic.twitter.com/bQCXodMkMB
— Nirav D. Shah (@nirav_mainecdc) July 23, 2021
Despite the presence of the delta variant, fully vaccinated people are well protected. Experts say that even if they do get the virus, they’re much less likely to develop severe symptoms. And meanwhile, 97 percent of people hospitalized around the country in the past few weeks have been unvaccinated, the U.S. CDC says.
County by county as of Saturday, there had been 8,475 coronavirus cases in Androscoggin, 1,952 in Aroostook, 17,414 in Cumberland, 1,408 in Franklin, 1,397 in Hancock, 6,679 in Kennebec, 1,182 in Knox, 1,104 in Lincoln, 3,676 in Oxford, 6,437 in Penobscot, 603 in Piscataquis, 1,482 in Sagadahoc, 2,312 in Somerset, 1,085 in Waldo, 954 in Washington and 13,744 in York.
By age, 18.9 percent of patients were under 20, while 18.2 percent were in their 20s, 15.2 percent were in their 30s, 13.4 percent were in their 40s, 14.5 percent were in their 50s, 10.3 percent were in their 60s, 5.3 percent were in their 70s, and 4.2 percent were 80 or older.
Around the world on Saturday, there were 193.1 million known cases of COVID-19 and 4.1 million deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. The United States had 34.4 million cases and 610,720 deaths.
This story will be updated.
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