BANGOR, Maine (AP) Hospitals are getting some relief from COVID-19 with a drop of more than a quarter in patients hospitalized with the coronavirus.
Hospitalizations across Maine dropped from 211 last Friday to 152 on Thursday, a decline of 28%, the Bangor Daily News reported. But the amount of decrease varied from hospital to hospital.
At Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, the number of COVID-19 patients declined from 40 to 22 for a 45% decrease. At MaineGeneral Medical Center in Augusta, there were 10 COVID-19 patients, a 50% decrease. At Maine Medical Center in Portland, COVID-19 cases stood at 25, a 24% decrease.
Robert Horsburgh Jr., a professor of epidemiology at Boston University, said a continuing upward trend would’ve spelled trouble.
“If intensive care beds remained full, hospitals would have to start making pretty hard choices when they’ve also got to deal with heart attacks and car crashes,” he said.
The daily burden of total new cases of coronavirus is continuing to trend up, however. The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Maine has risen over the past two weeks from 466.43 new cases per day on Sept. 22 to 556.86 new cases per day on Oct. 6.
The AP is using data collected by Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering to measure outbreak caseloads and deaths across the United States.
The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Friday that there have been more than 94,000 cases of coronavirus and 1,070 deaths from the virus in the state since the start of the pandemic. About 75% of the state’s eligible population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
