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92,008 Cumulative vaccinations in Maine (An increase of 6,161 from Wednesday)

74,760 First doses administered in Maine (An increase of 3,690 from Wednesday)

17,248 Second doses administered in Maine (An increase of 3,108 from Wednesday)

35,638 Total cases (An increase of 675 from Wednesday)

536 Deaths (An Increase of 6 from Wednesday)

675 New daily cases (A decrease of 26 from Wednesday)

8,013* Diagnosed cases in the past 14 days (An increase of 115 from Wednesday)

198 Currently in hospital (Last reported Tuesday, data not available from Wednesday)

Another six Mainers have died as health officials on Thursday reported 675 more coronavirus cases.

The number of coronavirus cases diagnosed in the past 14 days statewide is 8,013. This is an estimation of the current number of active cases in the state, as the Maine CDC is no longer tracking recoveries for all patients. That’s up from 7,898 on Wednesday.

It marked a reversal from Wednesday’s spike when new cases shot up to 701 after a sustained dayslong streak below 400.

Two Cumberland County residents, a Kennebec County resident, a Penobscot County resident, a Washington County resident and a York County resident have succumbed to the virus, bringing the statewide death toll to 536. READ MORE

Public health officials, and scientists at vaccine maker Moderna, are still trying to determine what caused temperature disruptions to multiple shipments of vaccine, rendering them potentially unusable.

On Monday, 35 of 50 shipments arrived in Maine with their temperature control devices triggered.

The initial fear, says Maine CDC director Nirav Shah, was that temperatures became too hot. But he says it’s now possible that the situation was actually the opposite.

“According to the distributor, McKesson, some of the gel packs that are used to maintain the appropriate temperatures during shipping on Sunday, were actually too cold,” he says.

Shah says if temperatures were too cold, it’s more likely that the vaccine may be salvaged, but he stresses that won’t happen until health officials and experts at Moderna determine that to be the case. READ MORE

In 1994, Al Dunlap took over as CEO of Scott Paper, which owned paper mills in Winslow, Skowhegan and Westbrook. Nicknamed “Chainsaw” because of his ruthless approach to cutting jobs, Dunlap created $6.3 billion for the company’s shareholders and netted $120 million for himself in just two years on the job.

But “success for shareholders meant devastation for workers and communities,” wrote University of Southern Maine economics professor Michael Hillard in his new history of the Maine paper industry, “Shredding Paper: The Rise and Fall of Maine’s Mighty Paper Industry.”

Under Dunlap, a third of Scott Paper’s 25,000 employees lost their jobs. Dunlap would leave to become CEO of a company called Sunbeam in 1995, where he laid off half the workforce and was eventually barred from helming public companies after an accounting scandal.

Dunlap sold off Scott Paper’s Maine mills. By 1999, the Westbrook mill was significantly downsized, and the Winslow mill shut down. Over the next two decades, many more would follow.

“Shredding Paper,” published last week by Cornell University Press, explores how Maine became to the paper industry what Detroit once was to the automobile industry, as well as how the industry fell from those heights. More than 32,000 paper makers and loggers worked in Maine at the industry’s peak in 1967. Today that number is less than 7,000, according to the Maine Department of Labor. In his book, Hillard argues that Wall Street greed drove that collapse. The argument has implications for today’s political and economic moment. READ MORE

Augusta man sentenced in cocaine, fentanyl drug trafficking case