Maine is expected to adopt new U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance on mask-wearing indoors for some vaccinated individuals as a resurgence of COVID-19 cases has kept the pandemic from receding.

Maine CDC director Dr. Nirav Shah told the Bangor City Council on Monday that masks are likely coming back.

“We probably need to be prepared, even for fully vaccinated folks, for the time being, to go back to wearing masks in indoor settings,” Shah told councilors, according to the Bangor Daily News. 

The Maine CDC did not immediately respond to questions Tuesday about mask-wearing recommendations.

Meanwhile, state health officials reported 172 new cases of COVID-19 for the three-day period from Saturday through Monday, adding to an increasing level of new virus transmission. One additional death was reported Tuesday as well.

Several national media outlets, citing government sources, reported Tuesday that the U.S. CDC is expected to reverse its earlier guidance and recommend that some vaccinated people resume wearing masks indoors. The New York Times and others reported that the group is expected to include those who live with or are in close contact with immunocompromised individuals or unvaccinated people, including children under the age of 12.

The U.S. CDC has recommended for months that unvaccinated people continue wearing masks in crowded public settings, but no one is enforcing that policy and masks have become increasingly rare.

Maine’s new COVID-19 cases include cases for Saturday, Sunday and Monday, as the state no longer processes tests over the weekend but reports the results on Tuesdays. The new figure continues an upward trend. The seven-day daily case average, which has been rising steadily for about a month, now sits at 64 cases after bottoming out at about 14 cases on average at the beginning of the month.

Case counts are far greater than they were last summer, when people were more cautious about large gatherings and wore masks in many public settings.

The same trend is playing out across the country and is even worse in some areas where the highly transmissible delta variant has taken hold. The seven-day average in the U.S. is about 42,000 cases, up from 12,000 cases this time last month. Some states, such as Florida, are being especially hard hit.

Of the new cases reported Tuesday in Maine, 46 were in Cumberland County, which is also the county with the highest rate of vaccination. But Cumberland County also has the most people, so even though its vaccination rate is 72 percent, there are still 84,000 people who have yet to get their shots.

Since the pandemic began, there have been 70,076 confirmed or probable cases of COVID-19 and 898 deaths, according to data tracked by the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Hospitalizations – which had been stable – have started to creep back up as well. As of Tuesday there were 33 individuals in the hospital with COVID-19, an increase of eight just in the last week. Of those, 18 were in critical care.

Vaccinations have slowed way down in Maine and across the country, although there are small signs demand might be increasing. In all, Maine has administered 807,540 final doses of COVID-19 vaccine, covering just over 60 percent of all residents and about 68 percent of eligible residents age 12 and older.

For the week ending Saturday, July 24, Maine averaged 1,299 shots per day, which is an increase from 1,164 shots per day on average the week prior.

Despite Maine’s high rate of vaccination rate overall, though, many parts of the state lag. While Cumberland County has vaccinated 72 percent of residents, nine counties have rates below 55 percent, including two — Somerset and Piscataquis  — that still haven’t reached 50 percent.

The geographic disparities are even more stark in rural areas. Among those between the ages of 16-39, 70 percent of those in Cumberland County have been fully vaccinated, which is close to the overall rate. However, in five mostly rural counties — Somerset, Piscataquis, Franklin, Washington and Oxford — the rate among 16-39 year-olds is less than 40 percent.

Public health officials continue to stress the importance of vaccinations, even as hesitancy has hardened into hostility for some. The overwhelming majority of all new deaths and hospitalizations from COVID-19 have been among unvaccinated individuals.

This story will be updated.

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