Maine reported 12 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Saturday, and one additional death, as schools are set to reopen in a week with fewer restrictions than other areas, thanks to the Pine Tree State’s comparative success in controlling the virus.

Maine’s cumulative cases rose to 4,026, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Of those cases, 3,609 have been confirmed by testing and 417 are considered probable cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

The additional death reported Saturday was a man in his 80s from Androscoggin County. One hundred twenty-five people have died with COVID-19 in Maine.

Subtracting the number of people who have recovered – 3,504 – and died, there were 397 active cases on Saturday.

Schools around Maine are set to reopen soon, with many districts opting for a hybrid of in-person and online education. Though much of the United States is seeing a surge in cases, the prevalence of COVID-19 is Maine is low – around 2.55 percent of all tests for the disease have come back positive since March, according to Maine CDC data updated Saturday.

Lately, the positivity rate has been even lower, Dr. Nirav Shah, director of the Maine CDC, said Friday. The average of the week ending Friday was 0.8 percent positive, and on Friday itself, just 0.61 percent of tests came out positive, he said.

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Shah added, however, that it’s not clear Maine will be spared forever. Nearby states such as Massachusetts and Rhode Island have seen upticks in cases.

A federal judge on Friday sided with Gov. Janet Mills in a lawsuit from business owners seeking to overturn her executive orders restricting their operations during the pandemic. The judge ruled that the businesses, which included a brewpub that remained open in defiance of state health regulations, hadn’t demonstrated any violation to their constitutional rights.

 

With federal aid expiring at the end of July, unemployed Mainers are struggling to survive financially as negotiations to extend the package stall in Congress. Maine state legislators on Friday urged Congress to reach a deal that could preserve benefits for the roughly 80,000 Mainers about to lose them.

County by county in Maine since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been 558 cases in Androscoggin, 33 in Aroostook, 2,082 in Cumberland, 45 in Franklin, 35 in Hancock, 170 in Kennebec, 28 in Knox, 35 in Lincoln, 53 in Oxford, 152 in Penobscot, three in Piscataquis, 55 in Sagadahoc, 33 in Somerset, 62 in Waldo, 12 in Washington, and 670 in York.

By age, 9.1 percent of patients were under 20, while 16.3 percent were in their 20s, 15.4 percent were in their 30s, 14.9 percent were in their 40s, 16.5 percent were in their 50s, 11.7 percent were in their 60s, 8 percent were in their 70s, and 8.1 percent were 80 or over.

Women still are the slight majority of cases, at just under 52 percent.

Of the nine patients with COVID-19 in Maine hospitals on Saturday, four were in intensive care and none were on ventilators. The state had 145 intensive care unit beds available of 390, and 264 ventilators available of 317. Maine also had 444 alternative ventilators.

Around the world on Saturday afternoon, there were over 19.4 million known cases of COVID-19 and nearly 723,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. The United States had more than 4.9 million cases and nearly 162,000 deaths.

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