Maine hospitals saw another drop in the number of COVID-19 patients statewide Thursday.

The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported 89 hospitalizations, down from 91 Wednesday. Of those hospitalized Thursday, 19 people were in critical care and six were on ventilators.

COVID-19 hospitalizations have plummeted 80 percent since reaching a peak of 436 on Jan. 13.

Maine also reported 254 cases of COVID-19 on Thursday and three additional deaths.

Since the pandemic began, the state has logged 234,413 cases of COVID-19 and 2,193 deaths, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

According to the U.S. CDC, the omicron BA.2 subvariant makes up about 35 percent of testing samples nationwide, including about 50 percent in the Northeast. Maine-specific data on testing for the subvariant will be updated on March 28. A report from two weeks ago did not detect the subvariant in 23 samples taken in March, and BA.2 made up about 5 percent of the 961 samples taken in February.

Omicron BA.2 is driving a surge of cases in Europe. U.S. health officials said they expect case numbers to rise, but they do not expect another surge of infections in this country.

Despite the subvariant being more contagious, public health experts say vaccines and treatments are holding up well, and after the omicron wave this winter, much of the population has immunity from vaccines or a previous infection, or both.

“Estimated infections, reported cases, hospital census and daily deaths continue to decline,” said Ali Mokdad, an epidemiologist with the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation from the University of Washington. The modeling system from the institute projects a further easing of the pandemic in the coming weeks. “Despite a steady return to pre-COVID-19 behaviors, transmission continues to decline.”


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