AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) The Maine Center for Disease Control says five more people have died from the flu in the past week, even as the number of new cases and hospitalizations slowed.

The state said Wednesday that the number of new confirmed cases dropped 23 percent from the week before to 497, and the number of hospitalizations dropped by half to 54.

Overall, the statistics suggest the number of influenza cases has dropped for a fourth week.

Flu season runs October until May. All told, there have been 61 deaths, 1,153 hospitalizations and 6,157 laboratory-confirmed cases.

This flu season has been driven by a type of influenza that tends to put more people in the hospital and cause more deaths.