Maine reports 451 new cases of COVID-19 over three-day period

Maine on Tuesday reported 451 new cases of COVID-19 over a three-day period. There were five additional deaths.

Because Maine does not report case counts over the weekend, Tuesday’s report reflects cases from Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Since the pandemic began, Maine has recorded 236,709 cases of COVID-19, and 2,207 deaths. Seven-day daily averages have hovered around 200 cases per day for the past few weeks, compared to about 850 in early March.

Hospitalizations had not yet been updated on Tuesday, but on Monday increased to more than 100 for the first time since March 18.

The Maine CDC reported 104 people were hospitalized with the virus on Monday, up from 93 on Sunday. Of those hospitalized Monday, 28 were in intensive care and five were on ventilators. On Sunday, 19 patients were in critical care units and five were on ventilators.

In the United States, doctors and public health officials are somewhat wary of the BA.2 omicron subvariant, which has become the dominant variant.

However, because vaccinations are working well and prior infections provide some immunity, and because of the increasing availability of the antiviral drug Paxlovid, US experts are not expecting a major surge in hospitalizations. Those hospitalized with the virus continue to be mostly people who have not been vaccinated, doctors have said.

BA.2 is about 50 to 80 percent more contagious than the original omicron variant, although scientists say it does not cause more severe disease. While less severe than delta and previous strains of the virus, omicron and omicron BA.2 can still be deadly, especially for those who are unvaccinated and have higher risk factors for severe disease, such as obesity, diabetes and compromised immune systems.

The official Maine CDC report shows that 10.4 percent of samples tested in March were the BA.2 omicron subvariant, but the report lags real-time data by about two weeks. Testing by Walgreens, the retail pharmacy chain, is showing more than 70 percent of positive samples tested in Maine at the pharmacy were positive for the subvariant.

This story will be updated.

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