Though COVID-19 cases in Maine are the lowest they've been in a year, Maine hospitals say they're still busy caring for patients with health issues related to the pandemic.
Dr. Dora Mills of MaineHealth says there are across-the-board increases in people who need care for strokes, heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
"Lots of health issues that we believe are in part due to the COVID epidemic because we know COVID itself, when you have a COVID infection your risk for a number of diseases goes up for reasons we're just beginning to understand," she says.
Dr. Jim Jarvis of Northern Light Health says the color-based rating for measuring how busy it is at Eastern Maine Medical Center's emergency room has been in the red throughout the pandemic, and only briefly dropped to yellow for a couple of days last week.
