This message is a brief daily update developed by Cumberland County Government on the situational status of the COVID-19 pandemic in Cumberland County and Maine. The materials provided here are collected from state resources and media, and notes taken by County staff - they are by no means a complete accounting of the subject matter at hand. For more details visit the state's CDC website, or your local news resource. |
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Daily Statistics
State Updates
News Items
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Daily Statistics
Good afternoon. We have a long update from the state below, but it's very much worth reading. COVID-19 cases continue to spike in Maine, with the state adding 80 new cases against 21 recoveries - increasing the active case count to 859 statewide. Cumberland County added 22 new cases against 5 recoveries, increasing our active case count to 264. There were no deaths. |
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Updates from the State
The key points from today's press conference:
What we are seeing right now in Maine is sustained, forceful and widespread community transmission across the entire state.
Based on the data, the trajectory that we are sadly on will continue.
Much of the rise in new cases continues to be driven by small indoor gatherings.
Some details from today's press conference with Dr. Shah at the Maine CDC:
See the points above again. Dr. Shah stressed the rate of viral spread means it is everywhere in Maine, and easily spreading through community transmission. Not a single new case in the past 24 hours is associated with an outbreak that the state is aware of. Most of the bulk of the new cases is coming from small indoor gatherings.
Of the cases identified yesterday, 10 are health care workers across 9 facilities. 10 are cases across 9 different schools. The average age is 40. The range goes from 5 years old to 87 years old. 13 of the new cases are children under 18. There are cases in 13 counties. In the past two days, there have been cases in 15 of 16 counties. There have been 1,154 health care workers to test positive - an increase of 10 since yesterday.
There have been 329 new cases over the past 5 days. Of the 80 cases today, 28% are from Cumberland County. 18% from Somerset, and 15% from York County. The Somerset County cases are especially worrying because there is no new outbreak investigation in any facility in that county; based on what the CDC knows, it's strong evidence of community transmission all throughout the county.
If you're gathering indoors with other people for hours, talking in a room with poor ventilation and poor mask wearing, people in that room will get infected - even if only one person comes to that room with COVID-19. What you can do indoors: - Shorten the visit, ideally under 15 minutes
- Make sure everyone is wearing face covering and keeping at least 6 feet apart
- Open windows
The things that are the most essential to focus on now are wearing face coverings and maintaining physical distancing, especially when in small groups that are "bubbles" and have not strictly adhered to some or all gathering guidance through the summer.
Maine DHHS announced a new layer of testing today. The state will distribute 400,000 rapid antigen tests that can identify COVID-19 from a nasal swab within 15 minutes. The tests are for people with symptoms of COVID-19, people at high risk of serious symptoms, and high risk critical infrastructure staff like health care workers, law enforcement, public safety personnel, first responders, school staff and correctional facility staff.
Maine's high volume of available tests is the result of a deal that Governor Mills reached with IDEXX in May. The test is free. The state expects to receive the tests by December and will distribute 75% of them through Walgreens. The other 25% will be distributed to organizations through an application process. Rapid tests have been distributed to congregate care facilities directly from US CDC.
With this particular test, it's more likely to produce a false positive than a false negative - a negative test is pretty reliable. Someone who gets a positive test should go into quarantine and follow it up with a PCR test.
Commissioner Liberty from Maine Corrections said that the state has performed courtesy inspections of prisons and jails across the state and are confident that facilities are compliant with face coverings.
Testing:
- The 7 day positivity rate statewide is 0.8%. One week ago, it was 0.53%. Two weeks ago it was 0.42%. The national rate is approximately 6.3%.
- Testing volume is 470 for every 100,000 people, near the all-time high point.
Outbreaks:New outbreaks - Pat's Pizza in the Old Port - 10 cases, most among guests - and primarily guests who visited the restaurant on 10/16 or 10/22. Others who attended Pat's on other evenings may have been exposed. If you were at Pat's in the Old Port in range of those dates, check in with your healthcare provider.
- Durgin Pines in York County - one resident, two staff, identified through periodic universal staff testing.
Open outbreaks - Woodland Memory Care - 12 cases, 9 among residents. The state expects the number to continue to grow, in part because of the unique vulnerability of the residents
- Second Baptist Church in Calais - 27 cases
- Waldo County Brooks Pentecostal - 60 cases (unchanged).
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News Items- At least 1,016 new coronavirus deaths and 81,457 new cases were reported in the United States on Oct. 28. Over the past week, there have been an average of 75,561 cases per day, an increase of 41 percent from the average two weeks earlier. As of Thursday morning, more than 8,932,900 people in the United States have been infected with the coronavirus and at least 227,600 have died, according to a New York Times database.
- U.S. economic output grew at the fastest pace on record last quarter as businesses began to reopen and customers returned to stores. But the economy has climbed only partway out of its pandemic-induced hole, and progress is slowing. Gross domestic product grew 7.4 percent in the third quarter, the Commerce Department said Thursday. The gain, the equivalent of 33.1 percent on an annualized basis, was by far the biggest since reliable statistics began after World War II; the previous record was a 3.9 percent quarterly increase in 1950. Still, the economy in the third quarter remained 3.5 percent smaller than at the end of 2019, before the pandemic began. By comparison, G.D.P. shrank 4 percent over the entire year and a half of the Great Recession a decade ago.
- The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits fell last week to 751,000, the lowest since March, but it’s still historically high and indicates the viral pandemic is still forcing many employers to cut jobs.
- Maine expects to cut off extended unemployment benefits in mid-November as the state’s labor market conditions improve. Another 1,800 individuals filed new claims for state and federal jobless benefits in the third week of October, Maine Department of Labor reported Thursday. Roughly 46,400 continuing benefits claims were filed under state and federal programs, including 700 claims for state extended benefits. Maine’s extended benefits program is available in times of high unemployment, the department said in a news release. It provides another 13 weeks of benefits to those who have exhausted their traditional 26 weeks of state unemployment payments.
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