More than a million Mainers now fully vaccinated against COVID-19

The number of Mainers fully vaccinated against COVID-19 has shot past the 1 million mark.

According to the Maine Center for Disease Prevention and Control, 1,001,626 of Maine’s 1.34 million population have been fully vaccinated, or 74.51 percent.

Among those eligible to be vaccinated – 5 years and older – the fully vaccinated tally is now 78.2 percent.

The high number of vaccinated people means “we are in a much better place, … a much different scenario than even a year ago,” Dr. Dora Mills, chief health improvement officer for MaineHealth, said on Thursday.

And the count of the fully vaccinated does not include those with booster shots; in Maine 594,080 people have also received a booster.

Meanwhile, the state reported 212 new cases and no new deaths from the coronavirus on Saturday.

Since the pandemic began in 2020, the Maine CDC has recorded 236,258 cases and 2,202 deaths in the state.

The number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 statewide remained steady at 91 on Saturday, the same number as the day before, according to the Maine CDC. Of those, 17 were in critical care units and five on ventilators.

Cumberland County, the most populous in Maine, is also the most vaccinated, with 85.3 percent of its residents having gotten a shot. Vaccination rates in other counties include Androscoggin, 67.19 percent; York, 72.82, percent; and Somerset, with the lowest rate at 60.96 percent.

All Maine counties are now considered at low risk for COVID-19 transmission, which means indoor masking recommendations have been lifted statewide.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its “community levels” guidelines late Thursday and moved Hancock County from the medium risk category to low risk. The CDC does not recommend universal indoor mask wearing in low-risk counties, but advises people to get vaccinations and booster shots, to get tested if they are exposed to COVID-19 or have symptoms, and to isolate if they test positive.

Mask recommendations have been eased across the country. Ninety-five percent of the nation’s counties are now considered low risk, with 4.5 percent moderate risk and 0.5 percent high risk, according to the federal health agency. The CDC reported Thursday that more than 99 percent of the country’s residents live in a location where there’s a low or medium risk of catching the virus.

Doctors are somewhat wary of the more contagious omicron BA.2 subvariant that has begun to spread throughout the country and in Maine, but because vaccinations are working well against the subvariant, and prior infections provide some immunity, they are not expecting a major surge in hospitalizations.

The federal government has authorized a second booster for at-risk populations.

Nationwide, at least one in every four people have been infected, and out of the country’s 331.8 million population, 978,254 have died, according to the U.S. CDC.