Another 420 COVID-19 cases are reported in Maine as vaccine demand changes

State health officials reported 420 new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, continuing what is now a several-week increase in the number of cases, even as principals benefit from easier access to vaccines.

As expected, Maine has exceeded one millionth dose of the vaccine given on Monday and is approaching another milestone, with nearly a third of the population receiving enough vaccines for the full vaccination against COVID-19. But the demand for appointments appears to be softening in parts of the state – a welcome change for those still waiting to be shot, but which could signal new challenges for public health officials struggling to gain “herd immunity.”

“Tomorrow we started our vaccination journey in a relatively smaller number of cases, which puts us in a better position to stop the spread, even if it doesn’t seem right now, and to reach a higher level of immunity, ”said Dr. Nirav Shah, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. “Our goal is to get every person in Maine who wants to be vaccinated, vaccinated.”

With Tuesday’s 420 new cases, Maine’s seven-day rolling average was 453. While this is lower than the seven-day average of 475 reported Monday, the average was 369 for the seven-day period that ends on April 20 and was 200 four weeks ago.

Tomorrow had the sixth highest daily rate of new cases last week, at 35 cases per 100,000 residents, according to the Global Epidemics program at Brown University School of Public Health.

THE REQUEST TO RAISE OPPOSITES?

Tomorrow continues to see a large number of new coronavirus infections, even though the state’s vaccination campaign is making gradual progress.

On Monday night, 42.7 percent of the state’s approximately 1.3 million residents received at least one stroke, while 32.2 percent received either either the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine or the single shot produced by Johnson & Johnson. These figures increase to 50.6 percent and 38.5 percent, respectively, among the population aged 16 and older who are eligible for vaccination.

“It’s a strong, resounding and remarkable progress,” Shah said in Tuesday’s briefing. “We, of course, have more work to do, namely another 50 percent of the state. But where we are now lays a strong foundation for continuing our work with vaccines and vaccinations. ”

Shah said the state has “built an architecture” that can also accommodate larger shipments of vaccine from the federal government. Dose allocation in Maine actually dropped this week, dropping about 2,900 doses to 50,780 distributed to the CDC of Maine, retail pharmacies and federally qualified health centers.

While Shah said the decline is “worrying”, it comes at a time when meetings are easier to find in many parts of the state.

On Tuesday, for example, Shah announced that a mobile clinic in Windham will offer vaccination on foot on Wednesday and Thursday, in addition to pre-appointments. The clinic, which is operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is located at 795 Roosevelt Trail and will operate from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday.

Shah said those received meetings will be first come, first served, however, and recommended people call 1-888-445-4111 to make sure they have a time frame.

Other vaccine providers also reported capacity available this week. While most of the time at the Northern Light Health Clinic at Portland Expo was booked, there were still a significant number of appointments available at the Northern Light High Volume Clinic at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor.

“We are seeing some areas with open appointments and, as always, Northern Light Health is reallocating where the current need is,” said Dr. James Jarvis, COVID-19’s senior executive in the hospital network. While we are pleased that half of the eligible mainers had at least one dose, we need all eligible mainers to be vaccinated. We ask unvaccinated doctors to look at the Northern Light Health website or the MeCDC website for a clinic near them. ”

The largest network of hospitals and healthcare in the state, MaineHealth, was still making its way through a waiting list of people who signed up for photos. But a spokesman for the network, which operates high-volume vaccination sites in Scarborough Downs and Sanford, as well as smaller clinics in the state, said it expects to offer meetings to everyone on the list within a week. or so.

“We anticipate seeing a change in supply-demand ratio and anticipate looking at new options for scheduling,” said MaineHealth spokesman John Porter.

“REVARENT” VARIANTS AND CASES

Tomorrow it ranked second in the country on Tuesday in terms of the percentage of the population who received at least one dose of vaccine and led the nation in the percentage of people who received the full vaccination, according to the Bloomberg News.

However, as vaccinations of older adults increase, the age of new cases is also trending. Of the 420 new cases reported on Tuesday, 25 percent were among people under the age of 20, while 19 percent were among people under the age of 20.

Shah said he and members of the Maine CDC team tried to reconcile this positive trend in vaccinations with the fact that Maine also has some of the highest rates of new infections in the country.

Nearly three-quarters of people aged 60 and over – an age group that makes up the vast majority of Maine’s 767 deaths – have received full vaccine doses since Tuesday. Only 12% of residents under the age of 30 received both doses of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or the Johnson & Johnson single-injection vaccine.

One of the potential reasons, Shah said, is that older and younger people were actually on somewhat separate tracks during the COVID-19 pandemic, with fewer interactions that could lead to transmission. In addition, more transmissible variants are now spreading in Maine, at a time when many younger people are socializing more, attending school, or engaging in other activities together.

“If the elderly are cared for to a large extent, then the fact that they have been vaccinated does not really help to slow down transmission among younger people, who are only now increasing their vaccinations,” Shah said. “So when you associate this phenomenon with variants that are more contagious, this is my hypothesis as to why our number of cases is high and may remain high and perhaps even higher.”

To date, the Maine CDC has tracked 57,965 confirmed or probable cases of COVID-19 since the coronavirus was first detected in the state in March 2020.

Tomorrow reported 107 so-called “discoveries” of fully vaccinated people who subsequently contract COVID-19. But that’s just 0.02 percent of the nearly 433,000 people who have completed their vaccines in Maine so far, though not all of them are considered “completely vaccinated,” because it takes two weeks after the final shooting.

One of the 107 people died after contracting COVID-19. Shah said the person was already in hospice care at the time of vaccination, but declined to go into further details for reasons of confidentiality. About 40% of the 107 individuals had symptoms of COVID-19, and eight were eventually hospitalized.

Some observers noted that the Maine CDC reported 420 cases on April 20, the date whose numerical abbreviation (4/20) became a cultural reference to marijuana use. Spokesmen for the Maine CDC and the Maine Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to a request for comment on the apparent coincidence.

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