A wedding at a small town in Maine resulted in 177 Covid-19 cases and 7 deaths. Getty
Victoria Forster
Forbes
In a day to remember for the couple, but perhaps not for the reasons they had hoped, a 55-person wedding in a small town in Maine ended up giving half the guests Covid-19, leading to a coronavirus outbreak involving 177 people, killing 7 of them.
The CDC report on the huge outbreak, published today, details how one attendee who reported Covid-19 symptoms the day after the wedding, led to 27 out of 55 wedding attendees eventually being diagnosed with the virus. Another 3 cases were found in other people at the venue including staff. The index, or first case is thought to be a person who attended the wedding on August 7th, before reporting Covid-19 symptoms the next day.
At the time of the wedding, Maine had a 50 person limit for such events and guests reportedly did not wear masks, nor observe physical distancing rules. Temperature checks were done on guests at the entrance of the venue, but considering many people with Covid-19 do not report having a fever, these are considered to be of very limited use for screening. It has also been suggested that they may do more harm than good by giving people a false sense of security, thus causing them to be less careful with other protective measures like masking and physical distancing. Read more >>