PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The Maine winter sports season has been indefinitely delayed, the Maine Principals’ Association has decided.
The season was set to start in mid-November, but the pandemic has made that impossible, the association said. Public health authorities in Maine on Wednesday reported the highest number of new coronavirus cases in a single day since the start of the pandemic.
The association doesn’t yet have a timetable for when practices might be able to start, the Portland Press Herald reported.
The Maine Department of Health and Human Services will play a major role in decisions about winter sports.
“We are hoping that we can begin to get information to people who are planning for winter sports in the near term, but we want to do so carefully and together,” Maine Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner Jeanne Lambrew said Tuesday.
In other news related to the pandemic in Maine:
CASES RISE
The state’s total number of reported cases of coronavirus has increased by 87, the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday. The new cases reported on Wednesday brought the total reported coronavirus cases in Maine to 6,387, while the number of deaths remained at 146, Maine CDC said.
The previous single-day high was 78 on May 19. The number of cases in the state is growing in part because of community- and family-level events, Maine CDC Director Dr. Nirav Shah has said. The state is also working to address an outbreak in Waldo County that has sickened at least 60 people.
Democratic Gov. Janet Mills is expected to address the surge in cases later Wednesday.
Maine’s caseload remains lower than most states, but has been steadily growing in recent days. Wednesday was the fourth day in a row the state has reported more than 50 coronavirus cases. Maine CDC had reported four consecutive days with more than 50 coronavirus cases only once before. That was from May 19-22.
For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, or death.
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TRUMP EVENT
The chief executive officer of a farm that hosted an event featuring President Donald Trump on Sunday said he was unaware that the event would grow to be so large.
Jonathan Kenerson of Treworgy Family Orchards in Levant said he was also upset by the lack of social distancing and mask use at the event. Some estimates placed the crowd at about 3,000.
“We share the concerns of many over the size of the gathering, lack of social distancing and mask wearing during the event. We were told this would be a small, unpublicized, surprise, private, photo op which gave us no cause for alarm. Given that information, we accepted the visit, just as we would for any president,” he said in a statement.
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