Update: Watch the 2 p.m. press conference with the Maine CDC and Gov. Janet Mills here.
As of Wednesday, there are now 770 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus spread across 15 of Maine’s counties, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Another four people have died from the coronavirus, bringing the statewide death toll to 24. The most recent deaths include a man in his 80s from Androscoggin County, a woman in her 70s from Cumberland County and two men in their 70s, both from Cumberland County.
So far, 126 Mainers have been hospitalized with COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, while another 305 people have fully recovered from it.
Only one county — Piscataquis — has not recorded a confirmed case of the virus.
Here’s the latest on the coronavirus and its impact in Maine.
— The Maine CDC will provide an update on the coronavirus at 2 p.m. The BDN will livestream the briefing.
— Rural counties with a high number of seasonal homes across the United States have seen more cases of the new coronavirus on average than those with less seasonal housing, according to an analysis by a researcher at the Carsey School of Public Policy in New Hampshire. The research suggests that rural scenery has drawn visitors seeking to escape densely populated metropolitan areas, who likely brought the virus with them.
— Maine health officials regularly inspect nursing homes to determine how well they’re following federal rules meant to prevent infections from spreading through their facilities. But as the coronavirus has spread through at least four Maine facilities over the past week, the novel respiratory infection at the root of a global pandemic hasn’t appeared to discriminate between places that score high on federal quality measures and those with below-average scores.
— At least two university nursing programs in the Bangor area — at the University of Maine and Beal College — will graduate their students early to get them on the front lines of the coronavirus outbreak.
— As Maine’s public health agency works to increase its staffing, a key component of its disease tracking and health education team remains understaffed and not present in some of the state’s most rural areas. The state’s corps of public health nurses fill a variety of jobs in the state’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. But the state is still operating on a reduced staff of public health nurses, almost three years after the Legislature passed a law requiring that the state fill all positions in the program.
— WEX, one of Maine’s largest companies, announced Wednesday that it is laying off some workers and furloughing others due to the economic slump caused by the coronavirus. The Portland-based company processes corporate payments across for fleet vehicles, travel and health care industries.
— The coronavirus pandemic has ended the record-breaking streak of home sales in Maine that started last year and ran into the first two months of this year, according to real estate experts.
— Jack Allard, a 26-year-old graduate of Bates College in Lewiston who contracted the coronavirus last month, is improving at a Pennsylvania hospital. Allard has been able to be removed from a ventilator some of the time and has been able to take sips of water. He spent the past month in the hospital and had been placed in a medically induced coma.
— As of early Thursday morning, the coronavirus has sickened 639,664 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 30,985 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University of Medicine.
— Elsewhere in New England, the coronavirus has killed 1,108 in Massachusetts, 868 in Connecticut, 87 in Rhode Island, 32 in New Hampshire and 30 in Vermont.
Watch: Janet Mills extends civil emergency in Maine
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