The number of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 increased to 103 Tuesday, the third time in three weeks that hospitalizations have climbed over 100.

Maine also reported 452 new cases of the virus over the past three days and added 47 COVID-19 deaths to the state’s official count following a review of death certificates dating back to January.

The hospital patient count increased from 97 on Monday. Of those hospitalized Tuesday, 22 were in critical care and three were on ventilators.

Hospitalizations dropped from more than 400 in January to less than 100 on March 18. The number has mostly hovered in the 90s since then, although it rose to 104 on April 4 and 5.

The addition of 47 deaths is the result of a state review of death certificates and is not a one-day spike in deaths. The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention conducts periodic reviews of death certificates to identify people who had the virus when they died of natural causes likely linked to the disease.

The Maine CDC does not report COVID-19 cases over the weekend, so Tuesday’s results reflect cases from Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

Since the pandemic began, Maine has recorded 238,169 cases of COVID-19, and 2,269 deaths.

Nationally, COVID-19 hospital admissions have declined by 7 percent over the past week – on a seven-day average – according to the U.S. CDC. But in the Northeast region, which includes Maine and is a hot spot for the BA.2 omicron variant, hospital admissions have increased by 8.8 percent during the past week.

Recent wastewater testing at various Maine sewage treatment plants is showing mixed results, with increases in virus prevalence in some areas, including a big jump in Bangor last week followed by a decline Monday. Testing is typically conducted twice per week at most plants.

Bangor’s virus prevalence – at 1.3 million copies of the virus per liter of sewage last week – was among the top 1 percent of sewer districts surveyed by Biobot. Biobot is a Massachusetts-based wastewater sampling company that contracts with various sewer districts in 41 states. On Monday, Bangor’s levels dropped to 865,000 copies.

Bangor’s virus levels are below what was seen in late January, when samples first started being reported to Biobot, and levels were at about 2 million copies per liter of sewage. But Bangor’s current COVID-19 wastewater levels are also much higher than in mid to late March, when levels were at about 200,000 to 300,000 copies per liter.

Other plants are experiencing slight increases or flat levels, including Portland Water District plants in the East End and in Westbrook, and in Brunswick, Lewiston-Auburn and York. Decreases were reported in Belfast, Blue Hill and Presque Isle.

 

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