- Religious services that resemble the pre-coronavirus cult are expected to resume in the middle of autumn, predicted Dr. Anthony Fauci on Monday.
- This projection depends on at least 70% to 85% of the population being vaccinated.
- Churches have been sites of super-propagating events, since the virus spreads easily indoors, when people are talking loudly or singing indoors.
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Dr. Anthony Fauci predicts that religious services – with hugs, praise and music – could be safely resumed in the middle of autumn, if the United States vaccinates people “properly, effectively and efficiently”.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, projected on Monday during the Conclave of the Black Clergy Choose a Healthy Life, an online meeting of more than 100 Black clerics, public health leaders and corporate and scientific leaders who are working to boost COVID-19 testing and other resources in the black community. He was co-led by Rev. Al Sharpton and Calvin Butts.
When Fauci entered the virtual stage, he answered questions from black clergy across the country. The question about religious services came from Reverend John Vaughn, who was representing the elected Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.
“When can we go back to church, when can we sing, can we play wind instruments?” he asked.
Fauci said that the timetable depends a lot on how quickly we can get “the overwhelming proportion of our population”, or at least 70% to 85%, vaccinated.
Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Reuters, Al Drago / AFP via Getty Images
Read more: What’s next for COVID-19 vaccines? Here are the latest news from the top 11 programs.
It is particularly important that the most vulnerable people, including black Americans, get the vaccine. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, black Americans are dying almost three times more than non-Hispanic whites and being hospitalized almost four times more.
Working to overcome a history of racial discrimination and ill-treatment
But getting the vaccine first requires the black community to trust that it is safe and effective, said Fauci and other speakers.
Black adults have shown more hesitation about COVID-19 vaccines than whites or Hispanics. About 35% of blacks said they probably or definitely would not have a COVID-19 injection, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, compared with about a quarter of those who identified themselves as Hispanic or white.
The hesitation among black Americans comes from a long history of racial discrimination and ill-treatment by the United States health system, said immunologist Dr. James EK Hildreth, president and chief executive officer of Meharry Medical College, at the beginning of the event.
As a black scientist involved in the vaccine development process, he said the coronavirus vaccine “looks nothing like Tuskegee”.
He was referring to the Tuskegee experiment, in which American scientists monitored about 400 black men with syphilis and suspended treatment for the disease. The study lasted about four decades, according to the CDC timeline, ending in 1972.
Hildreth said that “people of color should get the vaccine because otherwise we will be putting our lives and communities at risk”.
Biden is promising to speed up the launch of the vaccine in the US
Once the vast majority of the population is vaccinated, Fauci continued, “the level of viruses in the community will be so low that we will be able to really approach a degree of normality that is similar, perhaps not identical, but similar to where we were before all of that. ”
He said that if the United States pursues its vaccination campaign “appropriately, effectively and efficiently”, then “in the middle of the fall, we will be able to return to the kind of worship that we all yearn for now”.
So far, however, the vaccine’s launch in the United States has been much slower than senior Trump administration officials have promised. Implementations were hampered by the lack of federal assistance and limited funding, as reported by Insider’s Hilary Brueck.
US President-elect Joe Biden has promised to speed up the vaccine effort by setting a goal of giving 100 million vaccines in his first 100 days in office. He asked for more funding and said he would order the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help give immunizations.
Read more: Why the vaccine launch in America was a total disaster – and what it means for the coming months
Religious services and group singing activities are widespread events
Face-to-face religious services are the type of event that presents a particularly high risk of spreading the coronavirus.
That’s because people stay close to others indoors for a long period of time. Coronavirus usually spreads via droplets that can travel 6 feet between people. Singing or even talking out loud may allow the virus to travel further, some research suggests.
In fact, church songs and services have contributed to over-spreading events, in which an infected person can transmit the disease to many more people than the average of two.
In March, 60 members of a choir in Washington performed a rehearsal. Three weeks later, 45 members were diagnosed with COVID-19, three were hospitalized and two died.
In December, a holiday musical event at a church in North Carolina – where many people did not wear masks, including shoulder-to-shoulder choir singers – took 75 people positive for the coronavirus.
“If you are outdoors in a place that doesn’t have a lot of COVID? That’s almost no risk,” said former CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden, president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, at the beginning of the program. Monday. “If you stay indoors for a long time with lots of people shouting and singing and without masks, this is the biggest risk.”