The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention on Saturday reported 22 new cases of COVID-19 and no additional deaths, bringing the seven-day average of new daily cases to 17.1.

The federal government on Friday followed Maine in announcing that vaccinated teachers and students don’t need masks in schools. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention isn’t advising schools to require vaccination, however. Maine dropped the mask requirement in schools and other child care settings on July 1.

Maine’s cumulative COVID-19 cases rose to 69,219 on Saturday. Of those, 50,636 have been confirmed by testing and 18,583 are considered probable cases of COVID-19. The 14-day average was 18.3 daily cases.

Eight hundred sixty-two people have died with COVID-19 in Maine since the pandemic began.

Maine has led the nation in pandemic-era safety, adding significance to the U.S. CDC’s announcement that the rest of the country may now take off their masks, if vaccinated, in schools. Federal officials cited an overall decline in case numbers and deaths, and a rise in vaccinations, as a reason to lift the mandate.

“We’re at a new point in the pandemic that we’re all really excited about,” said Erin Sauber-Schatz, who leads the federal CDC task force that prepares recommendations designed to keep Americans safe from COVID-19.

The Maine CDC still recommends unvaccinated people, including children under 12, wear masks indoors.

By Saturday morning, Maine had given 795,108 people the final dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Among people 12 and older, the population currently eligible for vaccination, 67.14 percent are now fully vaccinated.

County by county as of Saturday, there had been 8,438 coronavirus cases in Androscoggin, 1,904 in Aroostook, 17,287 in Cumberland, 1,397 in Franklin, 1,378 in Hancock, 6,624 in Kennebec, 1,156 in Knox, 1,086 in Lincoln, 3,655 in Oxford, 6,373 in Penobscot, 591 in Piscataquis, 1,476 in Sagadahoc, 2,289 in Somerset, 1,054 in Waldo, 945 in Washington and 13,566 in York.

By age, 18.9 percent of patients were under 20, while 18.3 percent were in their 20s, 15.2 percent were in their 30s, 13.4 percent were in their 40s, 14.5 percent were in their 50s, 10.2 percent were in their 60s, 5.3 percent were in their 70s, and 4.2 percent were 80 or older.

Piscataquis and Washington counties saw no new reported cases over the past week, and several other counties had only one.

Maine hospitals on Saturday had 33 patients with COVID-19, of whom 20 were in intensive care and six were on ventilators. Since Tuesday, the Maine CDC has not been reporting total numbers of ICU beds and ventilators in its daily updates.

Around the world on Saturday afternoon, there were 186.2 million known cases of COVID-19 and over 4 million deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. The United States had 33.8 million cases and 607,074 deaths.

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