A DAILY DIGEST OF MAINE NEWS
TUESDAY, JANUARY 5, 2021 — ISSUE #62
EDITOR'S NOTE: Welcome to the Daily Monitor, an evening email newsletter that recaps the most relevant news and information from our editorial team and from our media partners around the state. The Daily Monitor is a product of The Maine Monitor and the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting.

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CORONAVIRUS IN MAINE
26,565 TOTAL CASES (An increase of 579 from Monday)
369 DEATHS (An increase of 10 from Monday)
597 NEW DAILY CASES (An increase of 221 from Monday)
14,614 TOTAL ACTIVE CASES (An increase of 554 from Monday)
191 CURRENTLY IN HOSPITAL (An increase of 5 from Monday)
11,582 RECOVERIES (An increase of 34 from Monday)
35,576 MAINERS VACCINATED (An increase of 2,621 from Monday)
TOP STORIES
Another 10 Mainers have died as health officials on Tuesday reported 597 more coronavirus cases across the state.

Tuesday’s report brings the total number of coronavirus cases in Maine to 26,565, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s up from 25,968 on Monday.
Of those, 22,448 have been confirmed positive, while 4,117 were classified as “probable cases,” the Maine CDC reported.

A man and a woman in their 80s from Aroostook County, two men in their 70s from Cumberland County, a man in his 70s from Penobscot County, a woman in her 70s from Somerset County, and a woman in her 70s, a man in his 80s and two women in their 90s from York County have succumbed to the virus, bringing the statewide death toll to 369, according to Maine CDC spokesperson Robert Long. Nearly all deaths have been in Mainers over age 60.

Maine’s seven-day average for new coronavirus cases is 524.1, up from 522.4 a day ago, up from 452 a week ago and up from 264.4 a month ago.
A Bangor psychologist and member of the Bangor School Committee has sued Northern Light Health, alleging that she was paid about half of what her male colleagues were paid while working at Acadia Hospital.

The lawsuit from Clare E. Mundell was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Bangor. The complaint seeks unspecified damages for unequal pay, sex discrimination and retaliation.

Mundell also is asking that U.S. District Judge Lance Walker order Northern Light to train all employees about civil rights law and pay disparity so other women aren’t paid less than their male colleagues.

Mundell, who was elected to the Bangor School Committee in November, began working at Acadia Hospital in November 2017 as a pool psychologist for $50 per hour. About two years later, she learned that her two male psychologist colleagues were making $90 and $95 per hour.
RELATED: A look inside the bills for the next Maine legislative session (By Caitlin Andrews of the Bangor Daily News)
More than a dozen Republicans in the U.S. Senate and over a hundred in the House are planning to challenge the presidential electoral vote at a joint session of Congress on Wednesday. Democratic U.S Rep. Jared Golden Of Maine’s 2nd District says that effort will fail.

Historically, the joint session is brief, as state delegations vote to ratify votes cast by their state’s electors. But not this year. Ardent supporters of President Donald Trump plan to challenge the votes in several states in an attempt to have him declared the winner. Golden says that will not happen.

“They are casting a lot of shadows. It’s kind of turning themselves into paper tigers. It’s going to fail,” he says. “People should listen to them and judge for themselves whether they think these individuals have a serious critique or truly believe what they are doing or saying or whether or not they are just making a show of it.”