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Another two Mainers have died as 18 cases of the new coronavirus have been detected in Maine, health officials said Sunday.
There have now been 3,415 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 3,397 on Saturday.
Of those, 3,028 have been confirmed positive, while 387 are likely positive, according to the Maine CDC.
New cases were tallied in Lincoln (1), Piscataquis (1), Androscoggin (2), Cumberland (12), Penobscot (2) and York (1) counties.
The statewide death toll now stands at 109.
As of Sunday, 359 Mainers had been hospitalized at some point with COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Of those, 25 people are currently hospitalized, with nine in critical condition and three on ventilators
Meanwhile, 21 more people have recovered from the coronavirus, bringing total recoveries to 2,772. That means there are 534 active and likely cases in the state, down from 539 on Saturday.
A majority of the cases — 1,866 — have been in Mainers under age 50, while more cases have been reported in women than men, according to the Maine CDC.
As of Sunday, there have been 110,558 negative test results out of 115,258 overall. Just under 4 percent of all tests have come back positive, Maine CDC data show.
The coronavirus has hit hardest in Cumberland County, where 1,805 cases have been confirmed and where the bulk of virus deaths — 64 — have been concentrated. It is one of four counties — the others are Androscoggin, Penobscot and York, with 496, 116 and 550 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 (40), Hancock (17), Kennebec (145), Knox (25), Lincoln (25), Oxford (42), Piscataquis (4), Sagadahoc (34), Somerset (30), Waldo (56) and Washington (3) counties. Information about where another three cases were detected wasn’t immediately available Sunday morning.
As of Sunday morning, the coronavirus has sickened 2,839,917 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 129,676 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University of Medicine.