Maine sees record number of COVID-19 hospitalizations – Portland Press Herald – Press Herald

A record number of people were hospitalized with COVID-19 across Maine on Monday amid the latest surge of the deadly coronavirus.

There were 214 people in the hospital with COVID-19, which is the highest single-day total since the pandemic began in March 2020, according to data from the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Sunday’s figure of 207 hospitalizations tied the previous record, which had been set on January 13 during the peak of last winter’s surge at a time when a fraction of Maine’s population had been vaccinated against the disease.

The number of people in critical care stood at 73 on Monday — down four from Sunday — and there were 33 people connected to ventilators. There were 58 critical care beds available across the state.

Maine’s hospitals have been straining to keep pace with the late-summer surge of severely ill COVID-19 patients as the more contagious delta variant of the coronavirus continues to spread throughout the state. While new case numbers were not available on Monday, Maine’s seven-day average of new coronavirus cases 485 late last week, which is roughly five time as high as the weekly average the beginning of August.

Public health and hospital representatives have estimated that between 70 and 75 percent of all hospitalized patients, and nearly all patients in intensive care units, are unvaccinated against COVID-19.

MaineGeneral Medical Center in Augusta has been consistently operating at 98 to 100 percent capacity in recent weeks while Maine Medical Center in Portland has been forced to divert ambulances to other facilities on several days because of a lack of space in the emergency department.

In addition to the steady increase in people severely ill with COVID, hospitals are also grappling with a bottleneck of beds for discharged patients. Many nursing homes, rehabilitation centers and other long-term care facilities are severely limiting the number of new clients they accept — or have closed their doors to new patients — because they lack the staff necessary to meet strict federal staff-to-resident ratio requirements.

This story will be updated.

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