As COVID-19 cases continue to rise, Maine hospitals are nearly full across our state
and health system leaders are calling on Maine communities to help mitigating the
spread of COVID-19. Mount Desert Island too has seen an increase in positive COVID-
19 cases, with more than a dozen positive cases resulted at MDI Hospital this week.
A joint press conference of four major Maine health systems Thursday sounded the
alarm that Maine hospitals are nearing ICU bed capacity. Leaders from MaineHealth,
Northern Light Health, Central Maine Healthcare and Maine General Health attended
the press conference to urge Maine people to get vaccinated if they have not done so
already, wear masks when indoors and be cautious about indoor gatherings.
As hospitalizations increased across our state, Dr. Nirav Shah, Director of the Maine
Center for Disease Control and Prevention, tweeted statistics Thursday afternoon.
“Stat(s) of the day: there are 133 people in the hospital with COVID-19 in Maine right
now. Fifty-nine are in the ICU and 27, on ventilators,” said Shah, in a tweet on
Thursday. “Of the 332 total ICU beds in Maine, only 34 are available. Yesterday, there
were 39 available beds. And on Tuesday, there were 52.”
With cases and hospitalizations on the rise, MDI Hospital calls on our dedicated
community and business partners to rise to the occasion once again by reinforcing the
critical protection measures of vaccination, masking, and distancing. We urge all
area businesses to reinforce vaccination, masking, distancing, hand hygiene for all
customers and staff and to display posters and signage on effective mitigation
strategies and to implement masking immediately for all workforce and visitors.
Mount Desert Island has done an amazing job of managing COVID-19 through
community cooperation and collaborative partnerships, and we need to call on our
dedicated community members and business partners once again to reinforce our best
mitigation strategies—vaccination, masking, distancing, and avoiding large gatherings
and crowded situations. We know these safe, effective strategies work, and we know
that together we can begin to reverse this troubling trend for our region.
Please visit our website MDIHospital.org or the Maine CDC website for additional
information on prevention and mitigation information
https://www.maine.gov/dhhs/mecdc/infectiousdisease/
epi/airborne/coronavirus/index.shtml
–Chrissi Maguire, President/CEO, MDI Hospital
–J.R. Krevans, Jr., MD, Chair, Infection Control, MDI Hospital
-Stuart Davidson, MD, Chief Medical Officer
