Sanford Covid-19 Update 9/24

On Wednesday, September 23, Superintendent of Schools Matt Nelson announced a drive-through Covid-19 testing program for all students, faculty and staff of Sanford High School and Sanford Regional Technical Center. The testing will take place on Friday and Saturday, September 25 and 26, and will be by appointment only. The full announcement, with details on the testing procedure and information on how to make an appointment, is here.

Dr. Nirav Shah, director of Maine CDC, addressed the outbreak at Sanford High School/SRTC in his regular press briefing on Thursday. He strongly urged all students, faculty and staff to take advantage of the testing. “A high rate of testing will be a critical way for officials to gauge the extent of the spread of the virus,” he said.

Dr. Shah characterized the spread of Covid-19 in York County as “forceful, community-level transmission,” and warned that even casual interactions could spread the virus. 44% percent of the new cases in Maine in the previous 24 hours were in York County, he said.

On Thursday, September 24, Maine CDC updated its map of Covid-19 case counts by zip code. With data as of September 20, there are a cumulative total of 108 cases of the virus in Sanford, and 32 in Springvale, for a total of 140 in our community. This is an increase of 37 cases since last week’s update. It is not known how many of these cases are active and how many are recovered, as that information is not broken down by zip code. There are currently 192 active cases in York County, as of September 23.

Image by leo2014 from Pixabay