AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) - Maine has lifted restrictions on travelers from Massachusetts that had required the visitors to produce a negative coronavirus test or quarantine for two weeks.
Democratic Gov. Janet Mills said the change went into effect Wednesday. Massachusetts joins New York, New Jersey and all the New England states except Rhode Island on Maine’s exempt list.
The governor’s office said the state made the change after examining the prevalence of coronavirus cases in Massachusetts. The state has similar rates to Connecticut and New York, the office said.
“We congratulate our friends to the south on their progress in mitigating the spread of the virus and ask them to continue to take all the appropriate precautions, as we know they will, to protect their health and safety and that of Maine people,” Mills said.
Maine was part of Massachusetts until 1820. A host of celebrations had been planned for this year, but they were scuttled by the pandemic.
In other news related to the pandemic in Maine:
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NURSING HOME OUTBREAK
An employee at a nursing home where a coronavirus outbreak has killed seven residents worked an overnight shift while she had COVID-19 symptoms, a newspaper reports.
The certified nursing assistant at Maplecrest Rehabilitation & Living Center in Madison documented her symptoms - a sore throat, cough, chills and muscle aches - in a written log but apparently didn’t tell her supervisors, and supervisors apparently didn’t review the log, the Bangor Daily News reported. She tested positive for the coronavirus a few days later.
A coronavirus outbreak to which the employee is believed to have contributed has since infected at least 39 residents and employees, and seven residents have died.
It’s one of several secondary outbreaks linked to an Aug. 7 wedding in the Katahdin region that’s responsible for more than 170 cases of COVID-19 across the state. The employee is in the same household as someone who attended the wedding, state officials have said.
Maplecrest had passed an inspection in July, but the nursing home was cited for the Aug. 11 lapses following a series of follow-up inspections in late August and early September, the newspaper reported.
An official with Maplecrest’s parent company didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment on Wednesday.
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THE NUMBERS
An additional 38 people have tested positive for the coronavirus in the state, the Maine Center for Disease Control said Wednesday.
The total number of confirmed cases is more than 5,100, the Maine CDC said. The number of deaths remained 140. The average number of new cases per day increased to 34. It was 29 a week ago.
For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death.
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