Maine CDC reports 363 COVID-19 cases, one death

The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported 363 cases of COVID-19 and one death on Sunday as Maine numbers approach mid-January levels, despite the state’s effective vaccination.

People under 30 were responsible for 188 of Sunday’s newly reported cases, or 52 percent. Public health experts believe that the increase in cases among young people in New England stems from a variety of factors, including more transmissible virus variants, the opening up of sports and social activities and ‘pandemic fatigue’ that leads people to take precautions.

Maine’s cumulative COVID-19 cases rose to 57,285 on Sunday. Of these, 43,029 were confirmed by tests and 14,256 are considered probable cases of COVID-19. The seven-day average of new daily falls rose to 475 on Sunday and still closer to the peak of 624 that Maine saw during the January boom.

Seven hundred and sixty-five people have been killed by COVID-19 since the Maine pandemic began. The person believed to be dead Sunday was a woman over 80 years old from Kennebec County, the CDC in Maine said.

Age distribution of new COVID-19 cases paints a similar picture across New England. In the last two weeks of March, people under 30 were responsible for 47 percent of the new cases in Massachusetts. Forty-six percent of the new cases in Connecticut were among the same age group in the first two weeks of April.

But despite the serious numbers, health experts say they hope things will start to decline soon. Young people are the youngest group to be eligible for vaccines, and because they build up immunity, the numbers will hopefully drop.

“My expectation is that we will see how things start to stabilize and then decline,” Samuel Scarpino, assistant professor at Northeastern University and director of the Emergent Epidemics Lab, said in an interview. “We’ve been opening up these younger age groups to vaccinations in a widespread way over the past week to month, which means we’re probably four to five weeks out on these people having immunity.”

Maine, meanwhile, is first in the country because of its speed to deliver doses compared to the population, which has fully immunized New Mexico, Alaska, Rhode Island and Connecticut in the percentage of residents.

As of Sunday, 564,283 Mainers had received a first dose of COVID-19 vaccine and 427,535 their final dose. Out of Maine’s 1.3 million population, 41.98 percent received their first dose, according to Maine CDC statistics.

Rural per province as of Sunday, there were 6447 cases of coronavirus in Androscoggin, 1,560 in Aroostook, 15,321 in Cumberland, 1,142 in Franklin, 1,194 in Hancock, 5,096 in Kennebec, 899 in Knox, 774 in Lincoln, 2,958 in Oxford, 5,068 in Penobscot, 420 in Piscataquis, 1,169 in Sagadahoc, 1,687 in Somerset, 773 in Waldo, 808 in Washington and 11,965 in York.

By age, 17.2 percent of patients were younger than 20, while 18.6 percent were in their twenties, 14.5 percent in their thirties, 13.3 percent in their 40s, 15 percent in their 50s, 10.9 percent were in their 60s, 5.7 percent were in their 70s, and 4.7 percent were 80 or older.

Of the 104 patients who had COVID-19 Sunday in Maine hospitals, 33 were in intensive care and 14 in ventilators. The state has 99 beds available for intensive care units, of which a total of 383 and 242 ventilators out of 319 are available. There were also 448 alternative fans.

According to Johns Hopkins University, there were 140.8 million COVID-19 cases worldwide by late Sunday afternoon. Worldwide, the virus has claimed more than 3 million lives since the weekend. The United States had 31.6 million cases and nearly 567,000 deaths.

“Previous