Maine Covid-19 hospitalizations contine to fall for third week

In the absence of widespread testing, its difficult to know if trends in new pandemic cases are an indication of the actual spread of the disease, or if the ups and downs have to do with who is and isn't being tested. But hospitalizations are less fuzzy: if you're really sick, you probably wind up there whether somebody tested you when you weren't symptomatic or not.

Is I've been gathering, combining, and publishing daily confirmed Covid-19 patient counts for each of Maine's hospitals for each of the past three weeks and am pleased to report -- in tomorrow's Portland Press Herald -- that patient counts continue to gently decline or plateau at almost all Maine hospitals. You can also read my report from a week ago on the patient count, which included some (still relevant) expert feedback on what it means: that social distancing is indeed succeeding in flattening the curve and protecting our hospitals from being overrun.

Bonus blog factoid: as of Thursday, April 30, the hospitals that have had the most Covid-19 inpatient burden (measured by cumulative patient days) were:

1. Maine Medical Center (Portland) - 879 patient days
2. Southern Maine Health Care (Biddeford) - 200 patient days
3. MaineGeneral (Augusta) - 152 patient days
4. Mid Coast Hospital (Brunswick) - 138 patient days
5. York Hospital (York) - 122 patient days
6. Mercy Hospital (Portland) - 88 patient days
7. Central Maine Medical Center (Lewiston) - 77 patient days
8. Eastern Maine Medical Center (Bangor) - 73 patient days
9. Waldo Memorial (Belfast) - 16 patient days
10. Inland (Waterville) - 8 patient days

My first dispatch on hospital counts was here.