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Another 18 cases of the new coronavirus have been reported in Maine, health officials said Monday.
Monday’s count brings the total coronavirus cases reported in Maine to 3,832, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s up from 3,814 on Sunday.
Of those, 3,422 had been confirmed positive, while 410 were classified as “probable cases,” the Maine CDC reports.
No new deaths were reported Monday, leaving the statewide death toll at 119. Nearly all deaths have been in Mainers over age 60.
Here’s the latest on the coronavirus and its impact in Maine:
— “Maine Gov. Janet Mills fired back at a Republican plan on Monday to allow Massachusetts and Rhode Island residents to travel here freely while relaxing other restrictions, saying they ‘care more about Massachusetts money than the life of a Maine person.’” — Caitlin Andrews, BDN
— “In mid-March, Rand O’Leary was just three months into his new job as the head of Maine’s second largest hospital when a health threat of colossal magnitude — the coronavirus — was finally found to be spreading through the Pine Tree State. The following weeks and months were a blur for Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor.” — Charles Eichacker, BDN
— “Economic hardship from the pandemic is hardly limited to performance venues. But while most sectors of the economy at this point have been allowed to at least partially reopen, venues are almost all still closed, faced with the fact that there’s no end in sight to the statewide ban on gatherings of more than 50 people, and that no COVID-19 vaccine is close to being ready for the general population.” — Emily Burnham, BDN
— “With no end to the pandemic in sight, the state’s most successful professional wrestling organization is going the way of Major League Baseball and the NBA. It’s putting on its spectacular, bombastic shows without an audience, for the cameras only.” — Troy R. Bennett, BDN
— “The biggest test yet of an experimental COVID-19 vaccine got underway Monday with the first of some 30,000 Americans rolling up their sleeves to receive shots created by the U.S. government as part of the all-out global race to stop the outbreak.” — Lauran Neergaard, Michael Hill and Jocelyn Noveck, The Associated Press
As of Monday evening, the coronavirus has sickened 4,286,663 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 147,558 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University of Medicine.