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On 7 August 2020, 55 people attended a wedding reception in a rural Maine
town of about 4,500 people with no previously reported COVID-19 cases.
177 cases were eventually linked to it, with **seven hospitalisations and
seven deaths.**
The distance it travelled
| Outbreak | Distance from the reception |
|---|---|
| The local community | — |
| A long-term care facility | 100 miles |
| A correctional facility | ~200 miles |
Both reached by secondary and tertiary transmission — a guest infected
someone, who infected someone else, who worked somewhere with a concentrated
vulnerable population.
None of the seven people who died attended the reception.
That is the arithmetic of a superspreading event and the reason gathering rules
are not only about the people who choose to gather. The guests accepted a risk
for themselves. The residents of a care home a hundred miles away did not.
How fast it was visible
| 7 August | The reception |
| 8 August | The index patient — a guest — develops fever, runny nose, cough, fatigue |
| 11 August | Two more guests develop fever, cough, sore throat |
| 12 August | Their positive results reach the state |
| 13 August | Three more guests test positive |
| 14 August | Outbreak investigation opens. 24 positives in the county had attended |
Six days from the party to a full investigation, in a town that had never had
a case.
The rules were followed, and the rules were not enough
The bride, groom and groom's family travelled from California on 6 August.
Under the governor's executive order, **because they tested negative shortly
after arrival they were not required to quarantine for 14 days.** They complied
with what was asked.
The investigation then found **noncompliance with CDC's recommended mitigation
measures** at the event itself, prompting **a health inspection of the
facility.**
Both things are true, and the combination is the lesson: a negative test on
arrival is a snapshot, not a clearance, and a venue's own practices are what
decides what happens once everyone is inside.
How it was traced
Confirmed cases by PCR; probable cases by **compatible symptoms plus an
epidemiological link**. Close contact defined as **within six feet for at
least 15 minutes**. Contacts were enrolled in an automated web-based
symptom-monitoring tool, and the transmission chains were reconstructed with
MicrobeTrace — which is how a wedding in one county was connected to a
prison in another.
**Avoid large gatherings, keep your distance, wear a mask, stay home when ill,
and self-quarantine after exposure to a confirmed case.** And the line aimed at
whoever is planning the next one: **work with local health officials to
determine the best policies for organising social events.**
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, MMWR.
Licence : CC0 1.0 (domaine public) · Adapté de www.cdc.gov
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