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Gov. Janet Mills defended her administration’s response to the Penobscot County HIV outbreak at an event in Bangor Tuesday as cases continue to climb.
The outgoing governor noted that the state has assigned more public health nurses to the area and emphasized testing and treatment efforts. She added that public awareness is important as testing has to be voluntary.
“We are trying to address it,” she said.
When asked why she hasn’t declared a state of emergency for the outbreak, Mills said “it’s not appropriate at this time to declare a statewide state of emergency for that purpose. That wouldn’t accomplish anything more than we’re already doing.”
New diagnoses related to the outbreak, which primarily affects people who inject drugs or are homeless, have been steadily identified over the last two and a half years. There are 43 known cases, with two new ones reported this month.
Mills was visiting Bangor for an event at St. Joseph Hospital celebrating funding secured for rape kit tracking in her supplemental budget.
She commended Bangor’s public health department, which she said is doing “excellent work” to address the outbreak. The department offers HIV case management, testing, safe sex supplies, educational materials and help with treatment.
The city also plans to add sterile syringe delivery to its case management services for people who have been diagnosed with HIV as part of the outbreak. The delivery services were made possible by a new provision under state law that was introduced by Rep. Ambureen Rana, D-Bangor, and went into effect last year without Mills’ signature.
The city’s case managers are funded by opioid settlement dollars, although syringe distribution would be funded by the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Syringe distribution is widely recognized as an effective strategy to reduce HIV transmission.
Some advocates have also criticized the Maine CDC’s resistance to expanding syringe distribution limits, which currently cap syringe exchange to a 1:1 ratio, or up to 100 needles at a time if someone has none to exchange. Mills didn’t mention syringe exchange when discussing the outbreak Tuesday, although the Maine CDC has emphasized the service as a key part of its strategy to combat HIV.
“This policy does not make any sense,” Anna McConnell, the executive director of the harm reduction organization Maine Access Points, previously told the Bangor Daily News, referring to the Maine CDC’s approach. “There’s just a huge disconnect between where we are right now and where we could be if the CDC was looking into the best practice and willing to implement a needs-based model.”
Mills issued an executive order soon after the COVID-19 pandemic began that temporarily allowed for unlimited distribution of syringes, but the Maine CDC walked that back in 2022 when gubernatorial hopeful Nirav Shah was leading the agency.
Local government agencies and community organizations, especially in Bangor and Portland, have ramped up proactive efforts to expand HIV testing and services throughout the state. Those preparations proved fruitful when a set of five HIV cases was identified in Cumberland County in November among people who inject drugs.
