Maine is Doubling Down in COVID Restrictions

If you are looking forward to having a beer in a bar today in Maine, I am sorry to disappoint you.  The Gov. of Maine is postponing the opening of bars till a later date, as of yet unannounced.  Bars were to open in Maine on Monday according to usnews.com.  In addition to not being able to drink at a bar, the state is also asking visitors from New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey to quarantine for two weeks if they enter Maine.  You can get around the quarantine if you produce a negative COVID test per reporting from usnews.com.

Governor Janet Mills said in a statement “If we do not control this outbreak, we may never get this evil genie back in the bottle,” according to the news outlet.  Maine has done a great job keeping the coronavirus cases down, but I wrote a few weeks ago about a wedding reception that turned out to be a super spreader event.  Maine is also ramping up testing and hopes to have more than 400,000 rapid antigen tests available, free of charge, later this month.

In other New England news that usnews.com is reporting on were the large crowds that still went to Salem, Massachusetts even though the town’s Mayor put out a statement that 2020 “is not the year to come to Salem,” per the news outlet.  Most were disappointed because nearly all the attractions in Salem that you would want to see for Halloween were closed due to COVID-19 restrictions.  Those closures were enacted just to keep the typical high crowds around Halloween away from Salem, but I suppose witches are gonna witch.