The number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 climbed above 100 Monday for the first time in more than two weeks.

The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported 104 people were hospitalized with the virus, up from 93 on Sunday. The last time Maine had more than 100 inpatients was March 18. The number had hovered in the 90s since then.

Of those hospitalized Monday, 28 were in intensive care and five were on ventilators. On Sunday, 19 patients were in critical care units and five were on ventilators.

The CDC does not release new case numbers on Mondays because the agency does not process case reports on weekends. But the number of new COVID cases has held steady in recent weeks at an average of about 200 a day.

Both cases and hospitalizations had plummeted from the peak of the omicron wave in January before the decline stalled this month. The leveling off of cases and hospitalizations coincides with the spread of the omicron BA.2 subvariant, which is more contagious than the original version of omicron.

In the United Kingdom and some parts of Europe, hospitalizations are again rising with a surge driven by the BA.2 subvariant.

In the United States, doctors and public health officials are somewhat wary of the BA.2 subvariant, which is spreading in Maine and nationally.

However, because vaccinations are working well and prior infections provide some immunity, and because of the increasing availability of the antiviral drug Paxlovid, U.S. experts are not expecting a major surge in hospitalizations. Those hospitalized with the virus continue to be mostly people who have not been vaccinated, doctors have said.

BA.2 is about 50 to 80 percent more contagious than the original omicron variant, although scientists say it does not cause more severe disease. While less severe than delta and previous strains of the virus, omicron and omicron BA.2 can still be deadly, especially for those who are unvaccinated and have higher risk factors for severe disease, such as obesity, diabetes and compromised immune systems.

The official Maine CDC report shows that 10.4 percent of samples tested in March were the BA.2 omicron subvariant, but the report lags real-time data by about two weeks. Testing by Walgreens, the retail pharmacy chain, is showing more than 70 percent of the cases in Maine are now caused by the subvariant.

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