The Maine Center for Disease Control reported a total of 2,109 coronavirus cases on Tuesday, an increase of 35 cases compared to the day before.
One new death has been reported since Monday, bringing the total number of deaths related to Covid-19 in Maine to 79.
215 of the total number of cases reported to date have been considered probable. The rest have been confirmed through lab testing, according to Maine’s CDC.
28 Mainers who have tested positive for the virus have recovered since Monday, bringing the total number of recoveries to 1,318.
After accounting for recoveries and deaths, the number of coronavirus cases that still considered active on Tuesday was 712, up from 706 the day before.
60 Mainers with Covid-19 were in the hospital on Tuesday. 26 were in critical care and 13 were on ventilators. Since the coronavirus hit Maine, 258 people have been hospitalized with the illness.
So far, 489 healthcare workers have tested positive for Covid-19.
The Maine CDC is monitoring an outbreak at the Cape Memory Care facility in Cape Elizabeth, where 67 cases have been reported. 47 of those are among residents, 20 among staff. One person associated with the facility has died.
There remain 26 confirmed cases at the Cianbro construction site in Augusta. 11 of those are full-time Maine residents, and the rest are out-of-state residents.
It was announced Tuesday that the state would be quadrupling it’s contact tracing team.
Despite a continuous rise in new daily cases, Maine CDC Director Dr. Nirav Shah says at least one metric shows the state trending in the right direction; the positivity rate, which measures the percentage of coronavirus tests that come back positive out of all tests being done. That’s fallen from just under 6% last week to 5.4% this week.
Increased testing will tend to drive that percentage lower. Shah says a positivity rate around 2% is the goal. For comparison, hard-hit New York state reports a 6.3% positivity rate. Neighboring New Hampshire is at 4.4%, according to data from Johns Hopkins.
The Maine CDC will be updating the number of total tests conducted every Wednesday. The chart below shows all testing that had been done as of Wednesday, May 20th. “PCR” testing reveals whether or not a patient currently has coronavirus. Antibody tests can determine whether or not they’ve already had it and have recovered.
The Maine CDC also released the graphs below, which illustrate the 14-day trend of metrics such as hospitalizations and new cases. That time window is what public health officials are looking at as they make recommendations for when certain businesses and services in the state can begin opening up safely.
The governor’s administration on Tuesday announced they would be accelerating their plan to allow Maine residents only to return to campgrounds beginning Friday, in time for the Memorial Day holiday. Those sites, originally slated to be allowed to open on June 1st, would need to introduce new safety precautions.
It was also announced last week that plans to allow gyms, fitness centers, and nail salons to fully reopen would be pushed back, “in light of emerging research and experiences in other states of COVID-19 transmission related to these establishments,” according to a press release from the governor’s office. The new reopening date for those establishments is expected to be announced in early June.
The latest information on coronavirus from the Maine CDC can be accessed by clicking here.
