Update: There are now 698 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Maine, and 19 deaths. Read the latest here.
As of Sunday, there are now 633 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus spread across 15 of Maine’s counties, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Of those, 120 Maine residents have been hospitalized with COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, while another 266 have fully recovered.
The state’s death toll stands at 19, with no new deaths reported Sunday.
Only one county — Piscataquis — has no confirmed cases of the virus.
It’s been more than a month since the first case of the coronavirus was confirmed in Maine. Here’s the latest on the coronavirus and its impact in Maine.
— The Maine CDC will provide an update on the outbreak about 2 p.m. The BDN will livestream the briefing.
— The Augusta Center for Health and Rehabilitation, a long-term care facility, has seen a rapid spike in the number of confirmed coronavirus cases, with 41 residents and 14 staff members infected. That accounts for two-thirds of its residents.
— Maine has seen more than a dozen nonresidents test positive for the coronavirus, though those infections are not included in the state’s overall total. Escalated tensions between city-dwellers and the people who live year-round in more sparsely populated vacation destinations have made headlines around the country. But a couple of reports in Maine have been particularly attention-getting. Those include the short-lived effort on North Haven to stop non-residents from visiting the island and a small group of people from Vinalhaven who allegedly tried to force a group of out-of-staters to quarantine by cutting down a tree and blocking their driveway. It’s enough to make a person wonder if the pandemic is tipping Maine’s folksy suspicion of those from away into something darker.
— Easter Sunday marks the holiest days of the year for Christians across the state and around the world. But as the coronavirus pandemic has forced gathering places, such as churches, to close their doors, observing Easter took a different form this year for many. That includes Adas Yoshuron Synagogue, which has hosted a free Easter dinner at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church that is open to everyone in the community. Organizer Linda Garson-Smith didn’t want to give up on the people they serve every year. So the dinner went ahead on Sunday, but this time in a take-out form.
— Since its founding in 2009, the nonprofit Partners for World Health has collected millions of dollars in medical equipment and supplies that hospitals in Maine and elsewhere in New England no longer want or need. The organization then ships them across the globe to places including Pakistan, Syria and South Sudan. These days, as the health care system in the U.S. braces for a surge in coronavirus cases, the hospitals that have donated usable equipment and supplies are asking for some of it back, or asking for donations of their own, so they have beds for makeshift intensive care units, machines that can work as ventilators for coronavirus patients and masks for their medical workers.
— The full weight of the coronavirus pandemic hit Gov. Janet Mills on a gray Sunday afternoon in the middle of March, a few days after the first case of the deadly virus had been confirmed in Maine. Flanked by advisers and a sign language interpreter with social distancing rules not yet in place, the Democratic governor announced she was declaring a state of emergency, a move that would set off a series of unprecedented orders in an effort to stop the spread of the virus. It has catapulted Mills from a good-times governor to a leader whose tenure might be most remembered for a massive public health crisis likely to leave a lasting effect on Maine and its economy.
— As of early Monday morning, the coronavirus has sickened 557,590 people in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as caused 22,109 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University of Medicine.
— Elsewhere in New England, there have been 756 coronavirus deaths in Massachusetts, 554 in Connecticut, 63 in Rhode Island, 27 in Vermont and 23 in New Hampshire.