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MILLINOCKET, Maine: A wedding in rural Maine turned into a COVID-19 “super spread” event that left seven people dead and 177 infected, renewing a long-awaited fear of the disease in the northeastern US state that the worst of the pandemic was behind.
The nuptials in early August were attended by 65 people, breaking the official limit of 50 allowed in a meeting.
A church ceremony was followed by a reception at the Big Moose Inn, both near the picturesque town of Millinocket, which has a population of just 4,000.
Ten days later, two dozen people associated with the wedding tested positive for COVID-19 and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Maine opened an investigation.
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The center’s local director, Nirav Shah, gave the latest death toll from the event on Thursday (September 18), adding that none of the seven people who died had attended the wedding.
Contact trackers linked the wedding to several virus hotspots across the state, including more than 80 cases in a prison 370 km away, where one of the guards had attended the ceremony.
Another 10 probable cases were found in a Baptist church in the same area, while 39 infections, and six of the deaths, occurred in a nursing home 100 miles from Millinocket.
The Tri-Town Baptist Church, where a wedding, linked to seven deaths and more than 170 COVID-19 infections, which took place on August 7, is seen in East Millinocket, Maine, on September 17, 2020 (Photo : JOSEPH PREZIOSO / AFP).
For the community and the wider region, which had relaxed the social distancing rules introduced earlier in the crisis, the news was a brutal wake-up call.
“When we found out about the outbreak … everyone really ducked,” said Cody McEwen, city chief.
“As soon as the outbreak happened, we completely closed the city again.”
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RECRIMINATIONS
Some of the residents were clearly angry at the event’s organizers, starting with the tavern, whose license was temporarily suspended.
“I don’t think they should have had the wedding. I think it should have been limited as it was supposed to,” said Nina Obrikis, a member of the Baptist church where the ceremony took place.
“We can’t go anywhere or do nothing,” he said.
Maine Gov. Janet Mills issued a warning to the state’s 1.3 million residents Thursday.
Such outbreaks “threaten to undo the gains we have made in the blink of an eye,” he said.
“COVID-19 is not on the other side of the fence, it is in our yards.”
Since the start of the pandemic earlier this year, similar superprocessor events have been reported around the world.
The first in the United States were a biotechnology conference in Boston in February attended by about 175 people, and a funeral in Georgia where more than 100 people contracted the virus.
In recent weeks, these clusters of infections have been observed on college campuses, forcing students to be sent home.
Oneonta University in upstate New York had more than 670 confirmed Covid cases in a month.
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