Nearly a third of Sacramento County’s coronavirus cases are connected to churches, officials said Wednesday, a discovery this week that has prompted alarmed county officials to issue a special plea for congregations to stop holding services and prayer groups.
County health chief Dr. Peter Beilenson said his office is asking congregations to hold services and fellowship meetings via Zoom, Skype or some other virtual platform - but not in person.
Speaking Wednesday morning, Beilenson said more than 100 of the county’s 314 cases of coronavirus infections are connected to church groups.
That includes 24 infections spread among one church whose congregants have continued to hold in-person fellowship meetings during the growing pandemic. Beilenson declined to name the church.
Another church, Faith Presbyterian Church in Sacramento, has had two parishioners die from the virus and a total of five people test positive for the virus. But church officials note that they halted in-person church services after March 8 and fully shut down their buildings on March 12, one full week before Sacramento County officials issued a shelter-in-place order.
“Most of the churches I know of are streaming live,” said Valery Brutsky- Stempkovsky, senior pastor at Second Slavic Baptist Church in North Highlands. His church posted a video on YouTube recently of a well-attended service at Second Slavic, but he said the video was from several years ago.
Other religious leaders said they were aghast to hear of a house of worship still holding services in person.
“It would be irresponsible for any pastor, or rabbi, or cleric to have people congregate,” said Pastor Sam Rodriguez of New Season church in south Sacramento.
Rodriguez said the last in-person service New Season held was March 15, four days before Gov. Gavin Newsom issued his statewide “stay at home” order, and it wasn’t particularly well attended.
“A lot of people stayed home, to be perfectly frank,” Rodriguez said.
County health officials are urging religious organizations to shut down.
“We want to make it absolutely clear to churches in the community they really have to shut down their gatherings, services, and prayer groups,” Beilenson said. “We have a problem with a couple of churches that have had their prayer groups still meeting.
“The next couple of months are crucial,” he said.
He pointed out that the virus is more easily spread among a small group sitting close together in someone’s home for an hour or two than it is when people are passing each other in the aisles of a supermarket.
Meanwhile, county officials said code enforcement officers will fan out Wednesday to 23 businesses identified by citizens as “bad actors” who have continued group activities or kept stores open despite a county order to stop all but essential work activities during the height of the coronavirus spread.
The county has gotten numerous calls in the last two weeks on its 311 phone line from residents reporting stores and other groups that are remaining open and not practicing social distancing, officials said.
Officials say they are looking into complaints about a flea market on Folsom Boulevard, a fitness center in Rio Linda, a clothing store on Fulton Avenue, a nail salon, a few churches and several liquor stores.
“We are sending out code enforcement to remind people this is not appropriate,” Beilenson said. The county officers will share the county order with those entities, and instruct them to close.
