HIV cases within Penobscot County have jumped by 40 percent in the last six weeks, and local experts predict cases will continue to rise.
Roughly six weeks ago, Penobscot County had only 15 people who were diagnosed with HIV since October 2023 but that case count has spiked to 21 since then, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
In fact, Penobscot County saw more cases of HIV in 2024 than in the decade before that, according to Lindsay Hammes, a spokesperson for the Maine CDC. In 2024 alone, 17 people tested positive for HIV, which is far higher than the average of two new diagnoses the county saw in the five years before that.
The ongoing cluster of HIV cases has Bangor’s top health official “extremely worried” about the community, she told the Bangor Daily News on Monday, and she expects the cases to keep rising, likely for multiple reasons.
That is in part because of the amount of stigma around the disease, Jennifer Gunderman, director of Bangor’s Public Health and Community Services Department, told Bangor city councilors on the HIV cluster at Monday night’s Government Operations Subcommittee meeting.
This can be especially harmful considering the cluster is primarily affecting people who inject drugs and may be homeless.
“This cluster is impacting marginalized people in our community who already experience stigma because they might be experiencing homelessness or substance use disorder or mental health challenges,” Gunderman said. “Having an HIV diagnosis just exponentially increases that stigma.”
Gunderman admitted that HIV “fell off our radar for a while” because Maine historically doesn’t see many cases and other public health emergencies took center stage in recent years.
Regardless, she said the Bangor public health department was “as prepared as we possibly could be” for the HIV cluster because the department is designed to be able to pivot to address new public health emergencies that arise.
Cases spiked in the last few weeks — and will likely continue to rise — for a series of reasons, Gunderman said.
The primary cause is local organizations, such as Wabanaki Public Health and Wellness, Penobscot Community Health Care and more, have increased HIV testing, leading to more cases being discovered.
Additionally, Gunderman said HIV transmissions are likely still happening. Local outreach workers are trying to combat this by providing education and access to supplies that can keep people safe. These supplies include sterile needles, condoms and PrEP, a medicine people at risk for HIV can take to prevent getting the virus from sex or injection drug use.
While this sounds simple, Gunderman said the challenge is getting these resources to people who may not be able or willing to go to a medical office or community center to pick up supplies or get tested for HIV. The solution, she said, is to bring the supplies to people.
HIV is a virus that attacks a person’s immune system, destroying cells that fight infection and disease, according to the CDC. With proper and consistent medical treatment, it can be virally suppressed to undetectable levels and a person can’t transmit it to others, but there is no cure.
All of the 21 who tested positive for HIV in Penobscot County since October 2023 reported injecting drugs within a year of diagnosis, and all but one also tested positive for hepatitis C. Nineteen of the 21 reported being homeless within a year of testing positive.
The group of cases in Penobscot County is still being classified as a “cluster” by the Maine CDC, but Gunderman, who was trained as an epidemiologist, said she would call it an outbreak. This is because she was taught that an outbreak is when there are “more than expected cases” in a given area or community.
“In my mind, this is an outbreak,” Gunderman said. “Maine CDC has classified this as a cluster for other epidemiological definitions that they’re using.”
Moving forward, Gunderman said she hopes the community at large will educate themselves on HIV, access resources to keep themselves healthy if needed, and have compassion for those who are HIV positive.
The Bangor public health department and other local resources are “trying our best” to meet the growing need for care as HIV cases rise, Gunderman said.
“This is at the top of our priority list at this moment,” Gunderman said. “We’re doing everything possible to leverage more resources, think more creatively and strengthen partnerships so we can prevent further spread.”