A Milford homeowner has been fined $ 1,500 by the city for hosting hundreds of people who did not wear masks or social distances last Saturday, an event described by the homeowner as a fundraiser for a cancer patient but judged by the director for public health of the city. as a possible COVID-19 spreader event.
“I never expected so many people to come to her aid,” said Luis Loja Caguana, who organized the fundraiser at his home in Franklin St. Louis. 21 in downtown Worcester County last Saturday. ‘I can pay the fine, but I helped people, who did not do anything illegal. … I never collected anything. ”
Caguana said he agreed to the fundraiser for the patient, who he said was an uninsured woman in the cancer treatment hospital, and used his personal Facebook account to spread the word to the Ecuadorian community that both he if the woman are part of.
He said he personally handed over masks to those who appeared, but acknowledged that some put them in their pockets instead of wearing them. He also said people do not keep 6 meters apart as required by public health rules when barbecuing volleyball or watching on one of two courts in the house.
Milford police arrived and ordered the event to end, which Caguana said happened immediately. ‘The police said more than 200 [people] or something like that, ‘said Caguana. “It simply came to our notice then. But I can not tell you how much it was. ”
Caguana said he has been wearing a mask all along and that he has not heard from anyone who has tested positive for COVID-19 since last Saturday. He also said he did not know anyone with the virus before the event.
“I feel bad,” he said. “When the police appeared I declared that was nothing to me.”
Caguana was fined for three violations of public health safety guidelines instituted by Baker’s administration, according to Jacquelyn Murphy, the city’s director of public health. He was fined $ 500 for violating a mandatory mask rule, $ 500 for having more than 50 people in one place, and $ 500 for failing to comply with the 6-foot social continuation rule, she said.
“This spring, Milford had one of COVID’s highest incomes. We worked really hard to get our numbers down,” Murphy said in a telephone interview Thursday. “But if you host a party of 200 people in context of a pandemic, you are working against the broader goals in the community. “
Murphy said that in the spring the city reported 200 COVID cases in one week, but it managed to drop the number to just 15 in the last reporting period. She is afraid that now there is the potential that the infection rate will increase from last Saturday’s event.
“Large meetings of this kind create opportunities for COVID to spread very quickly,” she said. “A lot of people in the city are upset about the fact that people are being punished. I would much rather not give fines. I would much rather people follow the rules because the rules are set to protect everyone. ”
John R. Ellement can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @JREbosglobe.
