School districts across Maine that have reopened for the fall — including some in the southern Midcoast — are seeing a growing number of COVID-19 outbreaks just a week or two into the new academic year.
The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating 10 COVID-19 outbreaks at schools across the state, according to spokesman Robert Long.
Nearly 80 children with COVID-19 were admitted to hospitals across Maine between Aug. 1, 2020 and Sept. 6, 2021, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In the Midcoast, over 120 students at Regional School Unit 5 — serving Freeport, Durham and Pownal — were in quarantine Thursday after 12 COVID-19 cases were detected across three schools.
Six cases were detected at Durham Community School, five at Freeport High School, and one at Morse Street School in Freeport. The majority – about 70 – of the students in quarantine were enrolled at Durham Community School.
Both Durham Community School and Freeport High School are currently classified under outbreak status by the Maine CDC, RSU5 announced Wednesday.
Students in RSU 5 do not need to quarantine if they are vaccinated, have had COVID-19 in the past 90 days, or participate in pooled testing. Pooled testing combines the same type of specimen from several people in one laboratory test in order to detect the virus that causes COVID-19.
“We are beginning pooled testing on Sept. 20 in our elementary schools,” Superintendent Becky Foley wrote in an email. “We know this will reduce the number of students needing to quarantine at the lower levels as they are not yet eligible for the vaccine.”
According to Foley, many of the Durham Community School students in quarantine were expected to return to school on Friday and Monday.
At Brunswick School Department, two cases of COVID-19 have been recorded since the start of school on Aug. 30. As of Thursday, Kate Furbish Elementary School and Harriet Beecher Stowe Elementary school reported one case each.
According to Brunswick Superintendent Phil Potenziano, about 15 students were required to quarantine between the two schools. Pooled testing is not yet available in Brunswick but is scheduled to begin on Sept. 27.
“Overall, I think it’s been a great start and a positive start. Teachers are doing a phenomenal job,” Potenziano said. “Having had a year of experience of how to mitigate and how to attempt to keep the virus out of our school has been, while sad that we had to do it, it has been extremely beneficial.”
Ashley Hunter, a Brunswick parent with a kindergartener in the school system, said she is satisfied with the school reopening process so far.
“I think the mask rule is perfect since they’re too young to get vaccinated,” Hunter said, although stating she would have liked to see the option of a hybrid-learning model to help limit exposure to the virus.
The Maine Department of Education estimates that between 90-94% of eligible Brunswick School Department students are vaccinated.
No COVID outbreaks were reported in the Bath-area Regional School Unit 1, Topsham-area Maine School Administrative District 75 or the Lisbon School Department. “We have not had any positive cases this first week,” RSU 1 Superintendent Patrick Manuel said. “Our staff has done an excellent job preparing for the first week of school, and we are thrilled to welcome all of our students back for full-time, in-person instruction.”
Efforts to reach superintendents in Lisbon and MSAD 75 were unsuccessful.
More than 5 million children across the U.S. have tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic. About 252,000 cases were added the past week, the largest number of child cases in a week since the pandemic began. After declining in early summer, child cases have increased exponentially, with over 750,000 cases added between Aug. 5 and Sept. 2, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics data.
The statewide case rate is 593.3 per 10,000 people over the last 30 days, and the current seven-day positive rate is 2.90 percent.
The data accessed by the Maine Department of Health and Human Services and the Maine Center for Disease Control states that Androscoggin County has experienced a sharp rise in cases over the last two weeks.
Androscoggin County’s new case rate per 10,000 people is 834.1, according to Maine Center for Disease Control. Similarly, York, Oxford, Kennebec, and Cumberland counties have new case rates that exceed the state average.
As of Thursday, 79,423 COVID cases have been reported across the state. Of those, 57,011 have been confirmed positive, while 22,412 were classified as probable cases, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control.
Times Record staff writers C. Thacher Carter and Kathleen O’Brien contributed to this report. This story was updated at 2:45 p.m. Friday, Sept. 10 to clarify the time period in which children were hospitalized with COVID-19. About 80 children were hospitalized with the illness between Aug. 1, 2020 and Sept. 6, 2021.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
Success. Please wait for the page to reload. If the page does not reload within 5 seconds, please refresh the page.
Enter your email and password to access comments.
Hi, to comment on stories you must . This profile is in addition to your subscription and website login.
Already have a commenting profile? .
Invalid username/password.
Please check your email to confirm and complete your registration.
Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.
Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.