The state of Maine’s official tally of confirmed delta variant Covid-19 cases has stood at 4 for weeks. But in just over a week, a new type of test being used by the state’s largest hospital network found 18 out of 49 patients had the variant, suggesting the virulent strain is much more prevalent than the statistics suggest.
It also might explain another worrying phenomenon that’s emerged over the past month. Almost all of those admitted to Maine hospitals with COVID-19 are winding up in intensive care, and many of them are younger than before. As I report in this week’s Maine Sunday Telegram, this is a major departure from earlier phases, when the proportion of inpatients in the ICU was more like a third. For details, please read the story.
COLIN WOODARD is a New York Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist. He is the author of six books that have been translated into a dozen foreign languages and inspired an NBC television drama. He is currently Director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Affairs at Salve Regina University. As State and National Affairs Writer at the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram he won a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2016. He is a contributing editor at POLITICO and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, Smithsonian and dozens of other major publications.