AUGUSTA, Maine — The Maine CDC said Monday there are a total of 17 people in Maine either confirmed or assumed to be sick with the coronavirus, COVID-19. That number was announced at 11:00 a.m. Monday morning by Maine CDC Director Dr. Nirav Shah. The CDC said as more people are tested, the number is expected to go up.
Some of those cases, said Dr. Shah, involve what they call 'community transmission', meaning people in Maine catching them from each other, and not from foreign travel.
“We are continuing to see evidence of community transmission in and around Cumberland county,” he said. “And consistent with the trend we see in other parts of the northeast and New England, we anticipate community transmission being detected across other counties of Maine in the near future.”
The CDC reported of those 17 patients have been hospitalized, the rest are self-quarantining at home, as are at least 100 other people the CDC is aware of, who are believed to have been exposed to COVID 19. Dr. Shah said there may be others they don’t know about who are self-quarantining at the instruction of employers or doctors.
The good news he announced is that more than 760 people have been tested and found not to have the disease. The CDC said testing will expand, more labs are joining in to do that work, more test kits and protective gear for health workers coming from the federal government.
The CDC has scheduled another briefing for Tuesday morning.
At NEWS CENTER Maine, we're focusing our news coverage on the facts and not the fear around the illness. To see our full coverage, visit our coronavirus section, here: /coronavirus
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