The recent downward trends in COVID-19 hospitalizations is an “encouraging” sign that Maine may be on the other side of the omicron variant’s peak, but numbers “are still higher than almost at any point in the pandemic,” the state’s top public health official said Wednesday.

“These reductions in hospitalizations are significant and meaningful,” Maine Center for Disease Control & Prevention Director Dr. Nirav Shah said at a media briefing.

As of Wednesday, there were 344 individuals hospitalized with COVID-19 in Maine, a decrease from where numbers stood one and two weeks ago.

“But make no mistake: 344 people in the hospital is a high number,” Shah said.

Hospitalizations remain a more accurate day-to-day snapshot of the pandemic in Maine as omicron’s high contagiousness renders daily case counts virtually obsolete.

The “scientific reality” of the omicron variant has also forced the Maine CDC to change how it tracks the disease: On Feb. 8, the state will end its contact tracing program for the general public, following a similar move for schools last month.

Contact tracing in hospitals, nursing homes, jails, prisons and other congregate settings will continue.

The reason for this change comes down to omicron’s transmissibility, not the state’s capacity for contact tracing.

The suspension to the contact tracing program will not have any effect on the backlog of tests, Shah said, as they are separate systems.

He said the state is still battling a huge backlog of positive tests awaiting review, which stood at 58,000 on Wednesday.

Omicron is up to three times more contagious than the delta variant, which was already more contagious than prior variants.

And with omicron, individuals become contagious and can start spreading the virus within two to three days of exposure. While COVID-19 is already “front loaded from a transmission perspective,” Shah said, omicron is even more so than prior variants.

“The bottom line here is that contact tracing is a race. It’s a race between public health and the virus; who’s going to reach people first: us or the virus,” Shah said.

“Now, until omicron, the race was fairly neck and neck. But omicron is a different competitor.”

If Maine’s public health arm and the omicron variant were competitors in a foot race, omicron “has a jetpack on its back. It can be halfway around the track before public health even gets its shoes on,” Shah said.

Previously, he compared tracking omicron to a chasing a “bullet train” on a bicycle.

“Simply put, we can’t tackle 2022’s virus with 2019’s tools,” he said.

MORE AT-HOME TESTING OPTIONS

Last week, Gov. Janet Mills’ office launched a pilot program in collaboration with the Rockefeller Foundation to send 125,000 free, at-home rapid tests to households across the state.

The program, dubbed “Project Access COVID Tests,” will send five at-home tests at no cost to 25,000 households through the end of February, Maine Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner Jeanne Lambrew said Wednesday.

The aim is to bring additional testing resources to “vulnerable communities,” Lambrew said.

“The idea of the pilot is to see if we could succeed in getting (tests) into people’s hands in areas where there are high risk factors, limited transportation, maybe higher levels of poverty or other sorts of disparities that make it more challenging for those communities to get access to health care, as well as testing,” she said.

The eligible ZIP codes represent about a quarter of all communities in Maine. Each household will receive five at-home tests at no cost. To look up eligibility and order tests, visit accesscovidtests.org.

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