In yet another plea to Mainers to follow public health guidelines, state CDC director Dr. Nirav Shah on Wednesday said the success of a COVID-19 vaccine will be in part determined by controlling the current outbreak.
Shah compared the ongoing outbreak in Maine to a train and the vaccine to its brakes — the slower the train, the more effective the brakes.
“But if the train is already speeding down the tracks way too fast that brake has much, much more work to do in order to be effective,” Shah says.
Shah made his remarks on a day when seven more Mainers with COVID-19 passed away and 405 cases were reported.
The deaths were in Mainers ranging in age from their 50s to their 100s, five men and two women, and they hailed from Androscoggin, Cumberland, Hancock and York counties.
Two hundred and fifty-two people have been hospitalized in the past 30 days.
Maine is faring better than most other states, but that’s because the virus is raging uncontrolled in most other parts of the country.
The state set its single-day record with 427 cases on Monday.
