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Another Mainer has died as health officials on Thursday reported 26 more cases of the coronavirus in the state.
There have now been 3,486 cases across all of Maine’s counties since the outbreak began here in March, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s up from 3,460 on Wednesday.
Of those, 3,092 have been confirmed positive, while 394 are likely positive, according to the Maine CDC.
New cases were tallied in Androscoggin (3), Cumberland (15), Franklin (1), Lincoln (1), Oxford (1), Penobscot (3), Piscataquis (1) and Somerset (1) counties.
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The latest death involved a woman in her 80s from Penobscot County, bringing the statewide death toll to 111. Nearly all deaths have been in Mainers over age 60.
So far, 365 Mainers have been hospitalized at some point with COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Of those, 16 people have been hospitalized, with seven in critical care and four on ventilators.
Meanwhile, 45 more people have recovered from the coronavirus, bringing total recoveries to 2,901. That means there are 474 active and likely cases in the state, down from 494 on Wednesday.
A majority of the cases — 1,915 — have been in Mainers under age 50, while more cases have been reported in women than men, according to the Maine CDC.
As of Thursday, there have been 118,407 negative test results out of 123,211 overall. About 3.5 percent of all tests have come back positive, Maine CDC data show.
The coronavirus has hit hardest in Cumberland County, where 1,844 cases have been confirmed and where the bulk of virus deaths — 65 — have been concentrated. It is one of four counties — the others are Androscoggin, Penobscot and York, with 502, 122 and 557 cases, respectively — where “community transmission” has been confirmed, according to the Maine CDC.
There are two criteria for establishing community transmission: at least 10 confirmed cases and that at least 25 percent of those are not connected to either known cases or travel. That second condition has not yet been “satisfied” in other counties.
Other cases have been detected in Aroostook (24), Franklin (41), Hancock (18), Kennebec (147), Knox (25), Lincoln (26), Oxford (44), Piscataquis (5), Sagadahoc (34), Somerset (31), Waldo (58) and Washington (5) counties. Information about where another three cases were detected wasn’t immediately available Thursday morning.
As of Thursday morning, the coronavirus has sickened 3,067,780 people in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as caused 132,498 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University of Medicine.