Maine will be one of the first states to begin releasing monthly reports on vaccination rates among school workers as part of a push to get more people inoculated against COVID-19.

The state has one of the highest overall vaccination rates in the country at 72.9%, as of Wednesday. And officials say even more school staff were vaccinated as of Aug. 31: 75.6% on average, with a high of 88.9% in Cumberland County and a low of 60.7% in Waldo County. 

The new monthly report will also include vaccination rates for most individual schools. At the state’s weekly COVID press briefing, Maine Health and Human Services commissioner Jeanne Lambrew said this data increases the state's efforts to track school outbreaks and infections. 

“That type of information, which exceeds what other states are doing, is actionable information that people can use to begin to target where things are going well, where things aren’t going well, so we can use the tools that we know work in those situations to reduce spread and improve outcomes,” Lambrew said.

Though it’s early in the academic year, Maine Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Nirav Shah said most children who become infected with the virus still appear to be contracting it in their community rather than at school. 

He said time will tell “whether schools become drivers of new cases,” or whether upgrades to ventilation systems and other precautions prove effective. But he urged all school employees and the public to keep seeking the information they needed to feel ready to be vaccinated. 

“Any (vaccination rate) that doesn’t have a one and two zeros after it isn’t high enough,” Shah said during Wednesday’s briefing. 

Shah said two children are currently hospitalized with COVID-19 in Maine and 192 patients are hospitalized overall. One child was admitted to intensive care with the virus in the past month, he said out of nine to date. The state also has more people on ventilators right now — 42 as of Wednesday — than at any other time in the pandemic. 

Shah noted that the Delta variant of the virus seems to infect children at a higher rate but doesn’t tend to make them as sick as it does adults. 

He said hospitalization rates are relatively stable even as new cases and demand for tests rise sharply in Maine. There were 778 cases reported for Wednesday and a positive test rate of 6.06%, the highest since Jan. 9. 

“We didn’t think that the onslaught of cases that we would be getting would be where we are right now,” Shah said. “This is a peak upon a peak, even greater than what we thought we were going to get.” 

Shah said the state has added three dozen new workers to help process additional tests, for a total staff of about 145. 

In the coming week, he said federal agencies will make more decisions about guidance for booster shots: who should get them and when, among other questions. But he said the public should remain focused on getting those first shots for the roughly one in three Mainers who are not yet vaccinated. 

“As much as boosters are in the news, our focus remains as much on first doses as it does on third doses,” he said. “First doses, primary vaccines, will be the way that we find ourselves out of the COVID tunnel. That’s because you can’t get a booster until you’ve had your first two doses.”

He said the state expects continued high numbers of cases for at least the next week if not longer.