A research team from the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution have written a memo and policy brief that present evidence that COVID-19 is spreading at religious gatherings. They are calling for policy makers and religious leaders to support one another to protect the safety of cogregants.
CRDC, Carter School, George Mason University
COVID-19 MEMO #1:
Religious Gatherings are Global Hotspots of COVID-19 Outbreak:
Saving Lives Trhough Getting Religions on Board
The Problem
Epicenters of COVID-19 outbreaks around the world are attributable to religious gatherings, featuring heavy singing, loud prayer, celebration, and mourning - all in close quarters. This has not only sickened and killed specific concentrations of people, it has created clusters of asymptomatic people, then proceeding to widely infect immediately following such events. This trend cuts across every religious group on earth. The increasing evidence for a large percentage of asymptomatic transmitters means the disease is far more widespread and requires even stricter rules on religious gatherings.
Here is a small sample that is global in scope:
| Area of outbreak | Known Infections # | Incident |
| Rockland County, NY | 2500 | Sabbath, holiday and daily prayer infection |
| Sacramento | 100 | Nearly a third of Sacramento County’s coronavirus cases from churches |
| Skagit Valley Chorale. Mount Vernon, WA | 45 infected, 3 in hospital, 2 dead | No one with symptoms, no coughing, heavy singing, all social distancing observed, sanitizers |
| Washington, DC | 1 | Rector tested positive for the virus after an Episcopalian service with more than 500 congregants receiving direct communion into their mouths from his hands |
| South Korea |
9000 Showed symptoms |
Crowded services with heavy singing in Shincheonji Church at Daegu |
| India | 370 | Hindu religious march in slums organized by Tablighi Jamaat |
| Malaysia | 673 |
Four days Muslim gathering outside Kuala Lumpur |
| Israel | 304 | Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Sabbath (Bnei Brak). Intensive Sabbath gatherings for singing and praying |
| Asia | 70 | Mosque gathering |
The key intervention is to enforce existing rules against gatherings. In order to do so, it is essential to rapidly persuade billions of people to embrace the idea that a virtual religious community is the highest religious experience right now, for it fulfills religion and also saves every single sacred life - at the same time. Gathering for cultural and religious experience is a fundamental part of the human experience, however, and it is not easily transformed. Many governors banned religious services with very mixed results, and enough exceptions and violators both persistently increase infection rates and fail to flatten the curve in many states. 24 American states, half of the USA, have not banned religious gatherings at all. This must change dramatically.
At the same time, thousands of religious communities have virtualized their prayer services almost overnight. The situation calls for firm action to extend and enforce public bans across every state of the country - with kindness, compassion, and compromise.
Chief Recommendations
- Enforcement of the law against violators needs to receive the clear endorsement of religious leaders global, national, and local.
- Strengthen the national and global embrace of technology as a means of facilitating religious experience in community with others. Elicit leaders, theologians, and religious representatives of all kinds to participate in online campaigns embracing the positive and legitimate experience of virtual prayer in community with others.
- The relation between indoor heavy singing and lethal COVID outbreaks must be compassionately demonstrated through science.
- Express sympathy and solidarity with the pain of isolated religious people at this time, and encourage virtual counseling and support for all who need it.
- Explore and encourage aggressive efforts by clergy and community to virtually and embrace and support all isolated community members, particularly in terms of ritual participation, counseling, friendship, celebrations, milestones, and grieving.
- Local and global religious leaders’ instructions for special permission in the circumstances of life and death to engage in virtual religious experience must be gathered and regularly disseminated to their respective religious communities, and also embraced by local authorities in joint press releases and joint television and radio appearances.
- Local and state leaders must encourage every religious leader and every denomination to send links to all leaders instructing the creation of effective online services and conduct of rituals, and all religious justifications thereof, as a compassionate alternative for those who will be grieving the loss of direct religious conduct and experience.
Evidence
Case of religious choral group causing massive outbreak
The extraordinary reach of breathing
Religiously centered outbreaks: https://bit.ly/2JFUPm4: https://bit.ly/34c7czQ; https://bit.ly/2JFJy5u; https://bbc.in/2yuEpdT; https://cnn.it/39Mm4pI; https://on.cfr.org/2JD5P3w; https://on.ft.com/3aK18RC; https://bloom.bg/34d14qR; https://nyti.ms/2UXNUtM; https://bit.ly/39Gb7WQ; https://n.pr/2xNsBmU; https://bit.ly/2RbswAd; https://bit.ly/3dUtYRg; https://bit.ly/2X4VlSG