Advertisement No hospital surge as Maine coronavirus cases grow more slowly than most of the country Share Shares Copy Link Copy

One month and one day after state officials announced its first confirmed coronavirus case, Maine has seen its total number of cases grow more slowly than the national average and has yet to see a surge in hospital patients with the virus.“Not yet,” said Steve Michaud, President of the Maine Hospital Association, in a telephone interview Monday. “It is pretty clear the distancing is working. The exponential rate of growth is not happening, but we don’t know when and where that peak is coming.”With 61 coronavirus patients hospitalized today, less than two percent of the total hospital beds available in all of Maine’s 33 non-psychiatric hospitals are occupied by coronavirus patients.An MHA database shows a statewide capacity of approximately 3,400 licensed beds, though not all hospitals are equipped to handle coronavirus patients.MaineHealth was treating 37 coronavirus patients, and Northern Light was treating 7 patients. Combined the two systems manage two-thirds of the state’s hospital beds, each with nine hospitals.“There is no doubt about we have enough total beds, but that’s almost irrelevant,” Michaud said. “The issue is do we have enough critical care beds. That is where the critically ill and Covid-19 patients end up.”Today, 22 coronavirus patients occupy 306 intensive care unit beds statewide, with 154 other ICU beds available, according to Maine CDC Director Nirav Shah. He said those patients are using nine of 332 ventilators in Maine hospitals, with another 271 available.Since announcing its first case March 12, Maine’s CDC reported 633 cases on April 12. But Maine’s cases are growing at one-fourth the national rate, according to a U.S. CDC report.The report, published April 10, studied one week of the outbreak nationwide, from March 31, when Maine had 303 confirmed cases, to April 7, when the state had 519.Maine’s “change in incidence” went up by 16.1 cases per 100,000 residents, while the overall U.S. incidence rose 63.4 cases per 100,000 residents.According to the report, only 10 states have a lower change in incidence, ranking Maine 39th among the states in per capita case growth.Although the number of cases in Maine most recently doubled from 303 on March 31 to 616 on April 11, a period of 11 days, cases are doubling nationally at a rate of every 6.5 days, according to the U.S. CDC report, meaning that Maine’s coronavirus case total is doubling at roughly half the rate they are doubling across the country.In the first month of the confirmed case reports, Maine cases have grown, on average, by 20.5 cases per day.