Piscatachis is the only Maine county positive for coronavirus—Piscatachis—Bangor Daily News — BDN Maine

Linda Coan O’Kresik | BDN

Wonderful views of Mountain View Pond and Moosehead Lake from Greenville’s Big Squaw Mountain Ski Trial. As of Monday, Piscatax County was the only county with no confirmed case of rapidly spreading infection that caused a pandemic and blocked much of everyday life.

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More than three weeks after Maine confirmed the first case of a new coronavirus, the state recorded all but one of the 16 counties.

As of Monday, Piscatax County was the only county with no confirmed case of rapidly spreading infection that caused a pandemic and blocked much of everyday life. The other two counties, both Aroostook and Washington Last week recorded their first case.

[Our COVID-19 tracker contains the most recent information on Maine cases by county]

The lack of confirmed cases may be due to low population density in the county and limited testing for viruses that have completely masked the outbreak of coronavirus. However, even if not tested, it is quite possible that the virus is in the county.

“You have to assume it’s there.We’ll do that,” said Dora Mills, Chief Health Improvement Officer for the MaineHealth hospital system and former director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Was. “What we know from elsewhere is that the virus has probably circulated for several weeks before knowing that it is circulating.”

Piscatax County has much in common with hundreds of other US counties that have not yet documented cases of coronavirus. According to the Associated Press, about 85 percent of them are rural Analysis released at the end of last month. They also tend to be older, have lower household income, and have higher poverty rates. These factors are due to poor health conditions that put more people at risk for the virus.

When people are told to keep the virus away from each other, the population density of Piscatax County is low, with the advantage of being 4.4 people per square mile in 2010, the lowest in any county in the state there is. Mills.

“It may have been protecting them for a while,” she said. “When talking about social distance, it’s obviously easier in Piscatax County than in New York City, which has 70,000 people. [people] Per square mile. “

According to Mills, no local incidents have been recorded, and residents of the county may be in a false sense of security.

“There is no reason to think that Piscatas County is somehow isolated from other states,” she said. “The virus is unaware of the borders and there is still traffic going up and down the road.”

Also, healthy people, where the virus circulates first, are not preferred in a limited number of COVID-19 tests. These tests are recently reserved for people who are already hospitalized, have basic health problems, and live in a collective care environment, such as a nursing home.

Northern Light Health, a hospital system with two hospitals in Piscatas County, has set up drive-up test sites in Dover Foxcroft and Greenville. However, due to testing criteria, “it is rare for someone to be tested on an evaluation site,” said Chris Fakkini, a spokeswoman for Northern Lights.

According to Mills, the low population density provides some protection, but the rural nature of the county could put an event at risk of infecting most of the population at once. Rural areas are susceptible to so-called super-endemic events. Late February funeral This has caused the outbreak of coronavirus in Doherty County, Georgia.

“Because you have a gathering of 30 or 50 people in a rural town for a funeral, in proportion, it’s much larger than a gathering of 50 people in a city,” she said. “Most parts of the town can become infected in a matter of weeks.”

Greenville’s Dean and Dover Foxcroft’s Northern Light Mayo are working to increase their capacity in case of a coronavirus outbreak, according to Northern Lights CA Facchini, a hospital. These preparations include training staff to work in the hospital department during outbreaks and at the testing site where demand is greatest.

Watch: How is COVID-19 spreading?

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