Governor Mills Visits Cross Insurance Center Vaccination Site

Date: 02/13/2021

This morning, Governor Janet Mills along with Nirav Shah, MD, JD, director of the Maine CDC, and additional state officials visited the Northern Light Health COVID-19 Bangor Vaccination Site at the Cross Insurance Center. Governor Mills came to learn more about the process and flow of this vaccine site and how it could be replicated across the state. During a media conference following her tour, she shared, “It was a very efficient, smooth, and pleasant process, and I am so impressed. Thank you to Dr. Jarvis for heading this up, and for Northern Light for doing such an incredible job, as well as to the 160 volunteers here today. I’m delighted to be here to witness this event to admire what Northern Light has done in this locale. I’ll say that this entity is doing extraordinarily well giving shots in arms.”
 
“I was so impressed by the progress that they’ve made,” stated Dr. Shah. “We’d like to replicate the model and the operation here across the state, and so I’d like to take this moment to commend the entire Northern Light team for the progress that they’ve made … what is happening right above us that will be the pathway out of this pandemic for this state.”
 
During the media conference, Dr. Jarvis also took a moment to say a few words about recent developments that have been made to the Bangor vaccination site. “We opened our second vaccination pod today which increases our ability to vaccinate almost two fold. It is our intent to get to a point where we can see if we vaccinate 5,000 people a day at this facility. It is a joy for those of us who work here to be able to hear from people that they feel safer than they did yesterday, and that’s a wonderful thing.”
 
As the media conference was wrapping up, Dr. Shah commented on the hope he saw today at the Northern Light Health clinic. “I saw something that I hadn’t seen in the faces of people, and I haven’t seen that in about a year—which is happiness, joy, and optimism. I think sites like this and the process of vaccinating people across the state is for the first time, for many people in a long while, a sign of hope and optimism on the horizon so again that is in part due to the efforts that the team at Northern Light Health has taken. So, I’d like to take a second to thank them and commend them.”