Kovid-19 has killed three people and left 147 infected in Maine as a result of an outbreak at an indoor wedding and reception last month.
Although the state limit on social gatherings is 50, at least 65 people attended the reception at the Tri-Town Baptist Church on August 7 and at the Big Moose Inn in Milinaket.
As of the last week of August, officials said they had found 53 cases of coronavirus in people attending weddings in three different Maine towns.
As of Friday, 147 Maine residents who had either gone to a wedding or had a second-hand infection were reported to have the virus, officials said.
“One of the things we’ve learned in the last six months from the outbreak and working with Covid-19 is that an outbreak is not an island,” said Dr. Nirav Shah, director of Maine CDC, during a press briefing.
“The real domestic hammer is that outbreaks are not isolated incidents. An outbreak, especially in a nearby geographical area, quickly spreads many more epidemics. ”
Maine CDC spokesman Robert Long told NBC News that three people had died in the outbreak and none of them had even attended the wedding.
The wedding outbreak spread to the prison 230 miles south of Alfred as a prison employee attended a wedding, two nursing homes and a Calvary Baptist church 225 miles away in Sanford.
One of the victims was 83-year-old Theresa Dentremont, who died at the Milinacet Regional Hospital on August 21 after being infected with the virus.
Dentremont was not present at the wedding, but hospital staff believe she was infected by someone.
Her 97-year-old husband, Frank Dentremont, a WWI veteran and the oldest resident of East Millennium, was hospitalized in a similar facility in COVID-19 a few days later.
Dentremont recovered and was discharged from the hospital this week.
The other two victims have not yet been publicly identified.
Pastor Todd Bell was appointed to the wedding. Ten people from his Calvary Baptist Church have tested positive so far.
Maine has reported 4,500 cases of coronavirus and 132 deaths in seven months.
In all, more than six million cases and 186,000 deaths have been reported in the United States.
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