Maine - Legionella Prevention and Costs of Legionnaires Outbreaks

February 1, 2023

Maine’s top public health official, Nirav Shah, will become the No. 2 federal health official after the COVID-19 pandemic turned him almost overnight from a little-known bureaucrat into one of the state’s most famous people. Nirav Shah, the director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, became the ubiquitous face of a COVID-19 response that led to the sixth-lowest death rate among states and the fourth-highest share of fully vaccinated people, according to a New York Times tracker. sDespite a sparkling resume as both a trained doctor and lawyer who worked to combat disease outbreaks in southeast Asia, that path was not certain when his hiring was announced in May 2019. Months earlier, he had left his job running the CDC counterpart agency in Illinois under a Republican governor and was harshly criticized for his handling of a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak that killed a dozen people at a state veterans home. The state’s two U.S. senators — both Democrats — called for his resignation in late 2018. (Source)