COVID-19 hospitalizations jumped by nearly 30 people on Monday, with 369 Mainers hospitalized across the state, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
While still short of Maine’s pandemic record of 387 set on Dec. 21, Monday’s number shows hospitalizations growing once again after falling to 329 on Thursday then climbing to 340 on Sunday.
“Those numbers we fear will continue to go back upward,” Maine CDC Director Dr. Nirav Shah said Monday during an appearance on
Maine Public’s “Maine Calling” show.
Shah said the world is heading into its fourth year with COVID, following its discovery in 2019. And while many people track daily case numbers, he and other medical professionals believe the most important data to follow is hospitalizations, critical care beds and the number of people who need to use a ventilator to breathe.
In Maine, Monday’s numbers show 113 people in critical care and 54 people on ventilators. There are 52 available critical care beds statewide.
“Things in Maine right now are in a challenging state,” he said. “Case counts are among the highest they’ve ever been at any point in the pandemic. Much of that is driven by the omicron variant.”
Shah said omicron is not yet causing a majority of the cases in Maine, but likely will soon be on par with the delta variant.
Shah said he wanted to go on public radio to take questions from people who have not been vaccinated. After someone tweeted their skepticism about vaccine effectiveness, Shah cited statistics that show the unvaccinated are five times more likely to test positive, eight times more likely to be hospitalized and 14 times more likely to die.
He said although the vaccines are not 100% effective, they greatly reduced risk.
“We all intuitively understand that medicine is about reducing our relative risk,” he said. “Even if it doesn’t get us to zero risk, it still brings that risk down. That is the essence of what modern medicine is designed to do.”
On Friday, the most recent day for updated case counts, 1,107 people in Maine tested positive for COVID, with six deaths, the CDC reported. Of those, five were men and one was a woman. Three were in their 70s, two in their 80s, and one in their 40s. Two lived in Kennebec County and one each lived in Cumberland, Penobscot, Androscoggin and Sagadahoc counties.
When it comes to vaccinations, 75% of eligible Mainers – those age 5 and up – have received their final dose of the vaccine. Vaccination rates vary widely among Maine counties, with Cumberland County leading the way with 82% fully vaccinated, while in Somerset County, only 58% have received two doses.
Shah touted the success of the state’s vaccination campaign, noting that a year ago, 33,425 people had had one dose. A year later, the number of vaccinated Mainers is 1,154,000, he said.
But he said the state has more work to do and that’s why he wanted to answer questions from skeptics.
“The vaccine is the difference between going into battle with a battle plan versus going into battle blind,” he said. “The vaccines are just a battle plan that helps your body’s immune system know thy enemy before it goes into battle.”
Since the pandemic began in Maine, 146,736 people have tested positive, with 106,073 confirmed cases and 40,663 listed as probable. Deaths stand at 1,531 and 3,424 people have been hospitalized.