COVID-19 hospitalizations surge across Maine, hit record levels at Lewiston’s CMMC
Inpatients are younger and from rural areas, and the virus variant from U.K. may be part of the reason.
Hospitalizations for COVID-19 hit a record level at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston this week as statewide inpatient numbers surged to highs not seen since mid-February.
The new surge – which comes even as a majority of adult Mainers have received at least one vaccine shot – is different in that many of the patients needing inpatient care are younger than 60 and most are from rural areas. In the past, few infected people under 60 became so sick they needed to be admitted to a hospital.
Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer
As the pandemic summer drew to a close, things looked good for Maine. By almost every metric, the state had kept COVID-19 at bay through the tourist season: Per capita case rates, hospitalizations and deaths were all among the lowest in the country. Five and a half months in, Maine had flattened the curve and then bent it into the ground.
But over the five and a half months that followed, the dam finally broke, spreading the coronavirus to nearly every nook and cranny of Maine. State officials went from reporting a few dozen cases a day to several hundred. Hospitalizations soared to more than 200 at one time, more than triple the worst day of the spring wave. More deaths from the disease were reported in the first two weeks in January than in March, April, May and June combined.