December is a great time for gatherings, it’s a season of joy. A season of hope. A season of happiness. At this time of year, people should be celebrating the holidays, at home with their loved ones, or out shopping for a gift for the children or grandchildren.

Sadly, however, while many of us are planning to celebrate the holidays, some are not so lucky. Hundreds right now in Maine are fighting for their lives in hospitals and homes across the state.

Hello, this is Governor Janet Mills.

More than a hundred people have died just in the last sixty days, taken down by the deadly Covid virus, mostly the virulent Delta variant. Most of those individuals just didn’t take the simple step of vaccinating against the disease that took their lives.

Others across the state are waiting for health care procedures so that they might live without pain, or so that they might achieve mobility, or so that they might find that a tumor is benign, or so that they can get back to work and enjoy regular family and daily life activities.

But our hospitals are being stretched thin. Health care is jeopardized for those who need it. And our health care workers, heroic as they are, are more exhausted than ever, taking care of people young and old in critical care, including pediatric critical care.

We are at a tipping point.

That is why this week I activated additional members of the Maine National Guard. In consultation with our health care systems, I am deploying them across Maine, on state orders, to expand our hospitals’ capacity to treat people with COVID-19 and other serious medical conditions.

They will be helping in certain nursing facilities to allow hospitals to discharge patients to those facilities. And they will be helping with monoclonal antibody treatments which, if administered early enough, can keep COVID patients out of hospitals.

In addition to activating more members of the Guard, I have also requested Federal COVID-19 Surge Response Teams on behalf of Maine Medical Center in Portland and Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston under the Biden Administration’s COVID-19 Winter Response Plan. This is in consultation with those hospitals.

If approved, teams of Federal clinicians, including physicians, nurses, and certified nursing assistants, will supplement existing staff and members of the Maine National Guard to provide care for those with COVID-19.

Taken together, we hope these actions will alleviate the strain on our health care system and provide better care to those who are ill. But we’re not taking anything for granted, especially with the imminent arrival of the Omicron variant, against which the current vaccines appear to be effective. And you shouldn’t take anything for granted either.

Next week, members of the Maine National Guard will leave their families and homes and communities to join our heroic health care workers in stepping up to meet the challenge.

What’s sad is that we are having to do this during this usually joyful time of year. December, the season of hope.

I hope that Maine people will step up to the challenge, too.

Get vaccinated, please.

And whether you’re vaccinated or not, wear a mask in indoor public settings. What’s the harm? There’s no downside.

If you run a store or business, make sure your staff are wearing masks to protect the public and themselves.

Get vaccinated.

Do it for your health, for the health of an elderly relative, for the health of a small child.

Do it for our health care workers, who bear the greatest burden of all. Do it for our National Guard who are joining them.

Why take chances? No matter where you live.

Getting vaccinated is no different than putting on a scarf in cold weather. Or wearing a hard hat in a construction zone. Or safety goggles when you’re welding.

It’s just common sense. And practical safety.

This holiday season, give the gift of health.

Get vaccinated today.

The life you save may be a small child’s.

The life you save may be your own.

This is Governor Janet Mills. Thank you for listening.

Throughout my time in office, my Administration has responsibly managed Maine’s finances. At the beginning of the pandemic, we immediately reduced spending, issued curtailment orders, and saved money to protect our state budget, and, now it’s paying off.

Hello, this is Governor Janet Mills and thank you for listening.

Just last week, Maine’s nonpartisan Revenue Forecasting Committee upgraded our revenue forecast by $822 million over the next few years – $822 million — that’s an increase of almost 10 percent over their previous projections.

This new forecast is a reflection of the fact that Maine’s Gross Domestic Product or GDP, an important measure of our economic health, has not only fully recovered from the pandemic, but has surpassed pre-pandemic levels.

And, we have savings in the bank. Money in the bank. Under my tenure, we have doubled the Rainy Day Fund to historic levels.

All of these factors are a testament to the success of good fiscal management and careful expenditures of federal and state pandemic relief that Maine has received.

But that doesn’t mean we are without challenges.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused things like the cost of electricity, driven by gas-fired generation, home heating fuel, gas at the pump, and other necessities, much of them related to the price of fossil fuels, all to go up and that’s putting a real strain on the budgets of Maine families. This is the worst time of year for costs to go up of course, as we’re trying to heat our homes through the winter months.

In the coming weeks, my administration will be putting together a supplemental budget to adjust our state spending and I will be proposing ways to use this additional state revenue to provide direct financial relief to folks who are hard hit by these increases to help them through these difficult times.

I am open to ideas from Republicans and Democrats and Independents in the Legislature on the best ways to help hardworking Maine people, giving the money back to them, and I hope that we can have a constructive legislative session starting in January to do just that.

We’ve already done it before, in the bipartisan biennial budget which is in place for this fiscal year, for instance.

That budget increased relief for families with children, for small businesses, for teachers, middle class homeowners, and renters; why we fully funded public education for the first time in history; we nearly doubled revenue sharing to every town and city in Maine to help with property tax relief; and we sent checks to people who worked throughout the pandemic, checks that are just now arriving in mailboxes this month.

There is no reason we can’t come together again soon to pass more direct relief for Maine people in the coming months. Giving the money back to you.

This is Governor Janet Mills and thank you for listening.