Daily Archives: October 3, 2021

A mother has warned that anyone can die from COVID-19, even young people, after her teenage daughter died just days after contracting the virus.

Jorja Halliday, 15, from Portsmouth, died at the Queen Alexandra Hospital on 28 September after she tested positive for the coronavirus four days earlier.

Her mother, Tracy Halliday, 40, said: "Some children are sort of a bit blas about, the say 'it's not going to happen to me, I'm going to be fine'. I just want people to know that it can happen to anybody, at any age, at any time. Even if you're young and healthy."

Mrs Halliday described her daughter, who was studying her GCSEs at The Portsmouth Academy, as a "loving girl" and "beautiful young lady", who was a talented kickboxer and aspiring musician.

"I'm still too shocked for words, I can't actually comprehend what's happened. It's almost like I'm beyond belief, even though I was there with her, my mind's still not believing it," Mrs Halliday told Sky News.

"I want definite answers as to why this has happened to a young, healthy 15-year-old girl.

"It was hard, but I also understood they were doing their best they could to save her. It was heartbreaking to see and to witness but I never would have forgiven myself if I wasn't there.

"Now I just want her to live on in our hearts, memories and minds forever."

Jorja's mother told Sky News that her daughter died from COVID myocarditis, which is inflammation of the heart caused by the virus.

She said: "One of the registrars at the hospital was saying to me they seem to be seeing it in teenagers around that age, that COVID symptoms are causing inflammation in the body.

"In Jorja's case it turned into inflammation of the heart and that's why when they put her on the ventilator her heart couldn't take the strain."

She said her daughter first developed flu-like symptoms before she underwent the PCR test which gave a positive result, leading to her isolating at their home.

Mrs Halliday added that she was struggling to eat on Sunday but by 27 September she could not eat at all due to her throat hurting and she contacted a doctor who prescribed antibiotics.

But when Jorja's condition worsened, she was seen by a doctor who said her heart rate was double what it should be and she was taken to hospital.

Mrs Halliday said that when the doctors realised how serious her daughter's condition was, they allowed her to spend time with her in the hospital.

"They realised how serious it was and I was still allowed to touch her, hold her hand, hug her and everything else. I was with her the whole time," she said.

Mrs Halliday said that Jorja did not have any known underlying medical conditions and added: "She was going to have the jab on Tuesday.

"But because she tested positive on Saturday she was isolating. When her isolation period was over she was going to get it.

"The day that she passed away was the day that she would have had it done."

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COVID-19: Mother warns coronavirus 'can happen to anybody' after teenage daughter dies on day she was to get vaccine - Sky News

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have passed 233.7 million globally, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of confirmed deaths stands at more than 4.78 million. More than 6.24 billion vaccination doses have been administered globally, according to Our World in Data.

From 4 October, primary school pupils in areas of France with a low COVID-19 infection rate will no longer need to wear protective face masks.

Pre-print research, due to be published in the Lancet, suggests that it's safe to give a COVID-19 vaccine and a flu shot at the same time.

Malaysia has given conditional approval for the Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine to be used for young people aged between 12 and 17.

Malaysia has also announced that it will be mandatory for all federal government employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 - with the only exemptions on health grounds.

Somalia's first public oxygen plant has opened offering hope for a country where life-saving treatment for COVID-19 patients has been largely unavailable.

Greece will introduce a nighttime curfew and ban music at bars, cafes and restaurants in its second-biggest city, Thessaloniki. The move comes after an increase in COVID-19 cases.

Egypt has received 1.6 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 from the United States through the COVAX vaccine-sharing facility.

New daily confirmed COVID-19 cases in Ukraine rose to nearly 12,000 for the first time since April, health ministry data has shown.

Singapore has recorded its highest one-day increase in confirmed COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic - 2,478.

Daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases per million people in selected countries.

Image: Our World in Data

Each of our Top 50 social enterprise last mile responders and multi-stakeholder initiatives is working across four priority areas of need: Prevention and protection; COVID-19 treatment and relief; inclusive vaccine access; and securing livelihoods. The list was curated jointly with regional hosts Catalyst 2030s NASE and Aavishkaar Group. Their profiles can be found on http://www.wef.ch/lastmiletop50india.

Top Last Mile Partnership Initiatives to collaborate with:

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced that an 18-month ban on Australians travelling abroad will be lifted from October. The ban has been in place since March 2020, with only a limited number of people permitted to leave for critical business or humanitarian reasons.

Reopening the international border for citizens and permanent residents will be linked to the establishment of home quarantine in Australia's eight states and territories, Morrison said, meaning that some parts of the country will reopen sooner than others.

"It's time to give Australians their lives back. We've saved lives," Morrison said during a televised media conference. "We've saved livelihoods, but we must work together to ensure that Australians can reclaim the lives that they once had in this country."

Further changes are expected to allow foreign travellers to enter Australia.

Only 15 of Africa's 54 nations have fully vaccinated 10% of their populations against COVID-19 and many frontline health workers remain at risk, the World Health Organization and International Council of Nurses (ICN) said yesterday.

The two organizations called for the distribution of doses to those at risk to be sped up.

The WHO had called for vaccinating at least 10% of health workers in every country by September 30 - a target met by nearly 90% of high-income countries, the United Nations health agency said.

"Despite the promises, we are not seeing the delivery. And this is a health and a human rights crisis," the chief executive officer of the ICN, Howard Catton, said. "Today nurses and health workers are still going to work knowing that they are at higher risk, but not having the protection of vaccine."

Meanwhile, some rich countries were already administering booster shots and vaccines to youth, he said.

COVID-19 vaccine doses administered by continent.

Image: Our World in Data

Written by

Joe Myers, Writer, Formative Content

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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COVID-19: What you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic on 1 October - World Economic Forum

Illinois health officials on Friday reported 18,735 new COVID-19 cases in the past week, along with 236additional deaths and over 159,000 new vaccine doses administered.

In all, 1,630,864 cases of coronavirus have been reported in the state since the pandemic began, according to the latest data from the Illinois Department of Public Health. The additional deaths reported this week bring the state to 25,017 confirmed COVID fatalities.

The state has administered 842,141 tests since last Friday, officials said, bringing the total to more than 32 million tests conducted during the pandemic.

The states seven-day positivity rate on all tests dropped to 2.2% from last week 2.7% and 4.4% the week before, officials said. The rolling average seven-day positivity rate for cases as a percentage of total tests also dropped to 2.8% from 3.7% last week and 4.1% the week before.

Over the past seven days, a total of 159,278doses of the coronavirus vaccine have been administered to Illinois residents. The latest figures brought the states average down to 22,754 daily vaccination doses over the last week, per IDPH data.

More than 14.5 million vaccine doses have been administered in Illinois since vaccinations began in December. More than 64% of adult residents in the state are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, with more than 81% receiving at least one dose.

As of midnight Thursday, 1,833 patients were hospitalized due to COVID in the state. Of those patients, 447are in ICU beds, and 236are on ventilators.

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Coronavirus in Illinois: 18,735 New COVID Cases, 236 Deaths, 159K Vaccinations in the Past Week - NBC Chicago

To hug or not to hug? Experts say it depends on where you've been and your personal tolerance for risk. Malaka Gharib/ NPR hide caption

To hug or not to hug? Experts say it depends on where you've been and your personal tolerance for risk.

Each week, we answer frequently asked questions about life during the coronavirus crisis. If you have a question you'd like us to consider for a future post, email us at goatsandsoda@npr.org with the subject line: "Weekly Coronavirus Questions." See an archive of our FAQs here.

I'm vaccinated. Is it safe to hug others who aren't in my bubble if they're vaccinated, too? What about shaking hands with a stranger, say, at work. I'm eager to get back to the way it was ... but slightly nervous.

You must remember this A kiss is just a kiss A sigh is just a sigh The fundamental things apply As time goes by

The lyrics of As Time Goes By are pretty famous yet no longer hold true. A kiss, even a kiss on the cheek, in the time of a pandemic makes people nervous. Early on in this global health crisis, French President Emmanuel Macron suggested curtailing the country's beloved cheek kiss to avoid spreading COVID-19.

Now we're in a new era the vaccine era. It's not an equitable era in terms of vaccine rates. But people are getting their shots around the world.

The French have reportedly begun cheek kissing again although not everyone feels comfortable resuming this venerable tradition.

And kissing isn't the only person-to-person contact that has come in for a pandemic rethink. There's hugging and handshaking, too.

In Nigeria, says Dr. Ifeanyi Nsofor, "most Nigerians have moved on as far as COVID-19 is concerned. Both the vaccinated and unvaccinated hug and shake hands freely. A few people still fist-bump though."

He says he'll hug a friend who is vaccinated but otherwise prefers a fist bump.

So the question looms: For those who've been vaccinated, how up-close and personal can you get?

The answer depends on various points.

First, let's consider how you catch COVID-19. "The data itself hasn't changed," says Dr. Jill Weatherhead, assistant professor of adult and pediatric infectious diseases at Baylor College of Medicine. "This virus is transmitted through respiratory and aerosol droplets. So we know closer contact with infected individuals will increase your risk of becoming infected."

But vaccination does offer protection. A vaccinated person who's infected will breathe out far fewer particles with pathogens and has greater barriers against getting infected. "Although, as we've learned with delta variant breakthrough transmission, infection is still possible in the vaccinated although much less likely," Weatherhead notes.

Then there's the matter of how much time goes by during a close contact with someone. We've all heard from public health agencies that the longer you're exposed to somebody who might be contagious, the greater the risk that you'll get infected. A lot of people talk about 15 minutes of close contact putting you at risk either a chunk of time or 15 minutes spread out.

That's a bit simplistic, says Seema Lakdawala, an associate professor at the Center for Vaccine Research at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Even less than five minutes of close exposure in a packed indoor room might be all it takes to catch COVID-19. "If the person is extremely infectious, being up-close to them indoors is very high risk," says Dr. Abraar Karan, an infectious disease doctor at Stanford University. "Hugging is as close as you can get."

By contrast, if you're outdoors, where airflow disperses those particles of pathogens, 15 minutes or more of contact might not be risky.

So that brings us back to the question: to hug or not to hug?

"I am a hugger by nature," says Lakdawala. "If I know the other person is fully vaccinated and I'm fully vaccinated, I'll give them a hug. I'm OK with that level of risk." She would generally wear a mask, although says she would hug her sister with no mask. Knowing her sister's routine, she says, "I am willing to take on her level of risk."

But she would take circumstances into consideration. "In a crowded bar, no," she says. Too many risks you're inside, you're up-close with lots of other people as well. "Outdoors, I'm OK."

A greater risk than a hug would be "sitting in an enclosed space with somebody you don't know," adds Charlotte Baker, assistant professor of epidemiology at Virginia Tech.

Baker, who is immunocompromised, is OK with hugging, too, with a couple of provisos: "As long as people are masked up and I know where you've been, I don't really have a problem with hugging."

As for the "where you've been" point if the hugger or huggee say, was on a six-hour flight the day before or very recently attended an indoor concert that might make you reconsider or make sure that you and the person you're hugging are wearing masks.

Then there are people outside your close family/friend "bubble" whom you might want to hug but may have jobs in fields that expose them to lots of potentially contagious folks, such as health care, education or the service industry.

"Their risk for getting COVID is different than mine. I don't think I'd walk up and just hug them," says Baker. "That would be a circumstance where I don't know your risk, and you don't know mine."

To sum up: The new reality is to share your personal status and preferences.

"I think most people at this point ask first because everybody has a different tolerance level," says Weatherhead. "If you are the hugger, ask if people are comfortable: 'I'm vaccinated and would love to give you a hug.' "

It would have been really weird pre-pandemic to ask "are you vaccinated against, say, the flu?" before hugging (or cheek kissing or shaking the hand of a stranger).

Now, she suggests, it is part of the new normal. "It's not an unreasonable or awkward thing to state anymore."

And that kind of open dialogue is important before hugging a kid, too.

"Ask the parent," says Baker. "And the parent should likewise ask any person the kid wants to give a hug to."

It's important to consider precautions when hugging children as well as adults, Baker adds: washing hands before and after, staying away from anyone who has been sick or exposed to a COVID patient.

The relationship of the adult and the child is also something to consider in weighing risks: "I would definitely rate grandparent hugs over neighbors."

Here's a rundown of potential risks from other up-close-and-personal interactions. In every case, it's your own tolerance of risk and other personal details that will inform a decision.

The cheek kiss: Being vaccinated offers protection, and the cheek kiss is fleeting. "Unless you took your hand and wiped your cheek and wiped your mouth," says Weatherhead, you'd likely be at very low risk of any infection.

The air kiss: "You're blowing air in someone's face," says Lakdawala. "I think a hug is less risky than an air kiss," says Lakdawala. Blowing a kiss from across an uncrowded room doesn't concern her. But "if you're a foot away from somebody and [want to] blow them a kiss, why not give them a hug?" she says.

The handshake: Getting germs on your hands doesn't make you catch COVID-19. But the risk isn't zero. Say the person you're shaking hands with is a stranger you're meeting at work. It is possible the person has been infected and shows no symptoms. Maybe they sneezed or coughed on their hand. Then you touch their hand. And ... you bring your hand to your face, because all of us touch our faces far more often than we think.

One solution is to hand sanitize after a handshake. So that little bottle of hand sanitizer you may have carried early on in the pandemic is still a useful item for your purse or pocket.

Another solution: Give up handshakes! "I don't handshake anymore," says Lakdawala. "People touch their faces way too much to adjust their glasses or mask." If someone sticks out their hand she'll say something like, "Oh yeah, we're going to elbow bump or fist bump because it's COVID time."

The elbow bump or fist bump. An elbow bump is pretty, pretty low risk, especially if you're not breathing in each other's faces while bumping. So the other person would have to have pathogens ON THEIR ELBOW OR FIST and you'd have to pick up those germs ON YOUR ELBOW OR FIST and then BRING YOUR ELBOW OR FIST to your eyes, nose or mouth to become infected. Unless you're a professional contortionist, this seems like the unlikeliest of scenarios to catch a virus. Ifeanyi Nsofor, the fist-bump-loving Nigerian physician, is definitely onto something!

P.S. If you're just an extraordinarily cautious or vulnerable soul, there's always the air hug!

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Can a vaccinated person hug another vaccinated person without risk? : Goats and Soda - NPR

My husband occasionally roots through our freezer and pulls out forgotten items, giving me a can we please throw this away look.

This time the container read Lentil Surprise in my neighbor Kerens cheerful handwriting.

Keren and her family lived two doors up. Four years ago, she was diagnosed with leukemia. A bone marrow transplant from her sister that year seemed to work the needed miracle, but she dealt with side effects from radiation, chemotherapy and the immune-suppressing drugs that kept her from rejecting the transplant.

Kerens husband, Mike, had his own autoimmune issues and had turned to a vegan diet low in oils, salt and sugar to help control his symptoms. Their daughter Ariella, who was 7 when Keren was first diagnosed, was a picky eater.

Keren loved good food, but she was often exhausted and money was tight, so takeout wasnt a frequent option. Trying to meet everyones dietary restrictions often left her nibbling chicken fingers or raw veggies for dinner. I cant cook three different meals, shed lament.

Soon thereafter, I texted her that Id made a cauliflower feta frittata. It was warm. Could I bring her some?

Next week my husband made spanakopita. Would she like a piece?

Soon we were regularly trotting over with entrees for Keren.

Then Keren asked if I wanted some old veggies and freezer-burned chicken they were throwing out.

I did.

A chicken and veggie pasta soon bounced back to Keren and provided our own dinner. It didnt suit the vegan or the picky eater, but Keren loved it.

I couldnt heal Keren. But sharing our food with her felt primal and life-affirming. With each bite, I imagined her growing stronger. I had to imagine it because once COVID-19 hit, we ate at separate tables two houses apart. Id see the three of them at dusk moving like slender masked ghosts on neighborhood walks. Id place food on their porch, ring the bell, then retreat 20 feet. Theyd open the door in their N95 masks and wed shout out conversations.

She used to joke that I could Iron Chef any leftovers in her fridge. My attempts with Kerens celery failed, partly due to my own distaste for it, but I gave it to my sister who found success with it in her home. Zero waste!

Keren was homebound long before COVID, but she was a lively correspondent. I was only one of the many helpers after her illness descended, but proximity made it easy to lend a hand.

For four years our culinary highway was in full swing, with plates of food, raw materials and compost donations (Keren was an avid composter) flying back and forth in a series of insane Tupperware exchanges. She even saved scraps for our dog and dropped off teas and jarred sauces that her family rejected. Now I realize she was cleaning house so Mike wouldnt have to deal with it when she was gone.

On good days, Keren cooked up a storm. Some endeavors succeeded wildly, like a vegan chocolate cake. Others not so much.

Mike wont eat it anymore, shed say, offering me a tub of vegan stew, Feel free to toss, but I cant bear to throw it out.

The addition of oil, salt, spices and alliums which Mikes diet severely limited were all Kerens dishes usually needed for my palate. But Lentil Surprise stumped me. Envisioning a vegan meatloaf, shed added a lot of ketchup. The dish was sweet and bland. I shoved it into the freezer and forgot about it.

Hanukkah and Christmas 2020 came and went, with holiday cookies chugging back and forth. Keren was thinner and visibly strained.

It wasnt clear whether Kerens immunocompromised system would be too frail for a COVID vaccine. She was in and out of the hospital for tests, and it made her cry when staffers didnt wear masks or slung them below their noses.

Late last year, Keren no longer had the energy to tend the compost bin. I wish I could say that I took it over, but I was too busy.

Then came the day Keren called me from her car. The cancer had returned.

Within two weeks, she was gone.

The food highway was no more.

And in my grief, I was left with bottled condiments and Lentil Surprise.

Just throw it away, my husband said sensibly.

I couldnt. Even though Keren would have laughingly told me to dump it, salvaging it was my way to honor the culinary friendship wed forged.

I was on a mission. First, I cooked more lentils. Then I sauted aromatics and spices and added tomatoes to make a masala, a nod to Kerens South Indian ancestry.

I mixed everything with Lentil Surprise and served it over brown rice. Only for myself my family wanted nothing to do with this experiment.

It was still sweet. But with every bite, I remembered meals Keren and I had shared and our zealous two-woman crusade against waste. And how, with almost everything Ive cooked in the last four years, Ive thought, Ill bring some to Keren.

When I washed out the container, I considered leaving Kerens handwritten label intact. But fearing it would cause Mike pain, I peeled it off and threw it away.

Then I filled the container with watermelon, walked up two houses and rang the bell.

Denise Hamilton, a former reporter at the Los Angeles Times, is a native Angeleno, a novelist and a Fulbright scholar.

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Op-Ed: Amid cancer and the coronavirus, it was leftovers that forged our friendship - Los Angeles Times

According to a new study published Tuesday in the journal PLOS Medicine, even a mild COVID infection can lead to symptoms that may last a lifetime. "The research found that over 1 in 3 patients had one or more features of long-COVID recorded between 3 and 6 months after a diagnosis of COVID-19," the authors concluded."This illness affects patients with both severe and mild Covid-19," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said. "Part of the challenge is that patients with long COVID could have a range of different symptoms that can be persistent or can come and go." Read on for 9 signs you may have Long COVIDand to ensure your health and the health of others, don't miss these Sure Signs You've Already Had COVID.

Pain, in general, is a frequent complaint for Long Haulers, as you'll read about in future slides, but pain localized in the chest and throat area can be quite common, including chest tightness, costochondritis (an inflammation of the rib cage near the lungs), a sore throatsome of these pains can scarily resemble a heart attack.

Abnormal breathing is unfortunately common among Long Haulers. Lucy Gahan, a clinical psychologist from the UK, told CNN: "I can only walk as far as the corner," she said. "In terms of running, I can't imagine when that will happen, if ever." She continued at the time: "I'm a clinical psychologist, and this is not anxiety," she said. "If doctors just say 'We don't know,' it's better than saying Covid symptoms only last two weeks."

RELATED: Over 60? Reverse Aging With These Health Habits

Nausea, diarrhea and vomiting are common symptoms of Long COVID, as is abdominal pain. "For two months, I was bloated and had zero appetite," one long hauler told us. He had his stomach x-rayed, and motility tests done, and was diagnosed with GERD and a hernia before doctors finally conceded it was Long COVID-related. "Some people don't immediately realize that their GI symptoms coincided with their COVID-19 infection, and they may not think the symptoms are related to COVID-19 because they're not respiratory in nature," said Dr. Jordan Shapiro, assistant professor of medicine gastroenterology at Baylor.

Fatigue is one of the most frequently reported symptoms of Long COVID. One recent study says Long COVID may be "reminiscent of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). ME/CFS is a debilitating condition, often triggered by viral and bacterial infections, leading to years-long debilitating symptoms including profound fatigue, post exertional malaise, unrefreshing sleep, cognitive deficits, and orthostatic intolerance."

RELATED: This is a "Significant" Factor in Getting Dementia, Study Shows

"Some people have sleep disorders, you might be able to help with sleep medications or ease or cognitive behavioral therapy," Dr. Walter Koroshetz, Director of NINDS, said during a panel about "The COVID Long Haulers Facing the Cognitive and Physical Consequences." "With the tremendous anxiety that comes from having had COVID and wondering if you're going to die, or family members may have had it as well.Then you think you're over it, you're not over it. So the amount of post-traumatic stress disorder that folks have been describing or even depression is actually quite dramatic."

"The long-COVID features involving pain were notable for 3 reasons," say the study's authors. "First, the overall incidence of pain (of any kind) recorded after COVID-19 was 34.2%, higher than any of the other features, and higher than after influenza (24.0%). Second, pain was the only feature that had a higher incidence in the 3- to 6-month period than in the 0- to 3-month period. Pain, therefore, appears to be a prominent and relatively persistent element of long-COVID. Third, headache and myalgia had characteristics that differed from the other pain categories: They were more common in women and in younger patients, and notably so in those who had been less acutely ill (as proxied by not requiring hospitalization or ITU admission, and without leukocytosis). In each case, this was in the opposite direction to the overall burden of long-COVID features. As such, post-COVID headache and myalgia may result from a different mechanism than the other long-COVID features."

RELATED: Proven Ways to Add Years to Your Life

"We know that headaches can occur at any time during the COVID infection. Actually, people are having headache as one of the first symptomsit's been described as one of the top five symptoms people can have early on during their COVID infection, and people can continue to experience headaches long after their acute illnesses over," Dr. Valerie Klats, a neurologist of Hartford Healthcare's Headache Center, told Channel 8. "Headache is just one of the things that can happenmore likely to happen than the other more severe neurologic problems people can experience due to COVID.These are very disturbing symptoms and very painful and difficult to function, can wreck your life."

Long Haulers suffer from "brain fog," or what Dr. Fauci calls an "inability to concentrate." "Within each organ system, there's a span of severity that in neurology can range from headache to encephalopathy, to muscle weakness, to brain fog that looks like dementia, memory gaps, trouble finding words, inability to do simple math, such as calculating a tip," Elizabeth Cooney, a writer at Stat, said during that panel about "The COVID Long Haulers Facing the Cognitive and Physical Consequences." "People can suffer months, even if their infection was never serious enough to require hospitalization."

RELATED: Secret Side Effects of Obesity, Says Science

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical advisor to the President and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has described "myalgia" as a frequent symptom of Long COVID. It's basically muscle aches and pains, and they can be anywhere on your body.

RELATED: Dr. Fauci Just Issued This "Formidable" Warning

There is no cure yet for Long COVID. Until effective treatments have been discovered, talk to your medical professional, who will try to address your symptoms. "Symptomatic treatmentthat's really important because that's what makes people feel better. So you have to parse out the symptoms and go after them one by one," says Koroshetz. There may also be a Post-COVID clinic near you. Studies like this new one may help. "The fact that the risk is higher after COVID-19 than after influenza suggests that their origin might, in part, directly involve infection with SARS-CoV-2 and is not just a general consequence of viral infection. This might help in developing effective treatments against long-COVID," say the authors. And to protect your life and the lives of others, don't visit any of these 35 Places You're Most Likely to Catch COVID.

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New Signs You've Already Had Coronavirus | Eat This Not That - Eat This, Not That

Twomore Mainers have died as health officials on Saturday reported another 741coronavirus cases across the state.

Saturdays report brings the total number of coronavirus cases in Maine to 91,468,according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Thats up from 90,727 on Friday.

Of those, 65,294have been confirmed positive, while 26,174were classified as probable cases, the Maine CDC reported.

A man and a woman in their 50s and 80s from Cumberland and Kennebec counties have succumbed to the virus, bringing the statewide death toll to 1,026.

The number of coronavirus cases diagnosed in the past 14 days statewide is 7,559. This is an estimation of the current number of active cases in the state, as the Maine CDC is no longer tracking recoveries for all patients. Thats up from 7,405 on Friday.

The new case rate statewide Saturday was 5.54 cases per 10,000 residents, and the total case rate statewide was 683.41.

Maines seven-day average for new coronavirus cases is 612.3, up from 593.1 the day before, up from 469.3 a week ago and up from 281.6 a month ago. That average peaked on Jan. 14 at 625.3.

The most cases have been detected in Mainers younger than 20, while Mainers over 80 years old make up the majority of deaths. More cases have been recorded in women and more deaths in men.

So far, 2,521 Mainers have been hospitalized at some point with COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus. Of those, 204 are currently hospitalized, with 63 in critical care and 29 on a ventilator. Overall, 42 out of 331 critical care beds and 195 out of 303 ventilators are available.

The total statewide hospitalization rate on Saturday was 18.84 patients per 10,000 residents.

Cases have been reported in Androscoggin (9,796), Aroostook (3,360), Cumberland (20,323), Franklin (1,888), Hancock (2,342), Kennebec (8,626), Knox (1,673), Lincoln (1,607), Oxford (4,501), Penobscot (10,680), Piscataquis (1,159), Sagadahoc (1,771), Somerset (3,657), Waldo (2,094), Washington (1,477) and York (16,511) counties. Information about where an additional three cases were reported wasnt immediately available.

An additional 1,826 vaccine doses were administered in the previous 24 hours. As of Saturday, 876,059 Mainers are fully vaccinated, or about 74 percent of eligible Mainers, according to the Maine CDC.

New Hampshire reported 495 new cases on Saturday and no deaths. Vermont reported 190 new cases and one death, while Massachusetts reported 1,648 new cases and 20 deaths.

As of Saturday afternoon, the coronavirus had sickened 43,632,358 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 700,502 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine.

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2 more Mainers have died and another 741 coronavirus cases reported across the state - Bangor Daily News