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It is offered to the Dioceses of England and Wales and has been prepared following discussions with officials from Public Health England and the HM Government Places of Worship Task Force. Key to implementation of this guidance is the Government's understanding of moving away from centralised detailed regulation to prudent local judgements.
The guidance contains General Principles, including information on social distancing, capacity of churches, hygiene, cleaning, ventilation and singing. It also contains specific guidance on liturgical events like Holy Mass, funerals, weddings, baptisms, confirmations, Sacrament of the Sick, Confession and Ordinations. The local bishop decides how any relevant guidance is applied in his diocese. Further guidance will be prepared for the Step 4 date of 21 June 2021.
Prevailing Local Conditions
All places of worship should always consider the prevailing local conditions for the virus. Special consideration should be given to the R number, the prevalence of new variants of the virus, the local rates of hospital admissions and any local public health advice. These data can be obtained from the Director of Public Health at the local authority, and it is important to have knowledge of these figures.
Mitigations
It is important to mitigate against the risks of virus transmission. Although the vaccine rollout programme is very successful to date, over 68% of adults having had one dose and 35% two doses, the risk of transmission is still live. Therefore, it is recommended that two key measures to help reduce aerosol and droplet spread remain in place for now:
Cleaning of Churches
General cleaning to a good standard, using generally available cleaning fluids and detergents, with attention to frequent touchpoints is the standard to continue. This is consistent with the latest evidence. This guidance is produced to clarify these points given recent scientific evidence. While the virus can land on surfaces and can infect people if they touch those surfaces and then touch their mouth, nose or eyes, this risk is lower than the risk from aerosol or droplet spread. There are several key things which churches and parishes have been doing, and should continue to do, which significantly reduce this risk:
Sanitising hands on entry to churches and before liturgies as in current church guidance reduces risk.
Ensuring people wear face coverings properly will reduce aerosol or droplet spread.
Ventilating buildings well (especially during and between services) remains important.
Maintaining a good general standard of routine cleaning using usual cleaning
detergents is sufficient for regular use:
Clearing spillages of body fluids (faeces, blood, vomit etc) should always follow specific higher standards not just because of SARS-CoV-2 but because of other pathogens. This guidance is reproduced in an Appendix again for ease of reference. If your own cleaners have a specific protocol in existence for body fluid spillages, then follow that.
If someone has tested positive for Covid-19 who has used your building in the last 24 hours, and you are aware of this, then you should clean thoroughly using ordinary detergents. That does not mean a “deep clean”, which is not necessary.
The risk of surface contamination, while generally low, is higher where there is long exposure time in the building, ventilation is poor, there is a high throughput of people, and where there is greater aerosol generation (eg in gyms and during physical activity.) Mitigating against these reduces risk.
Social Distancing and Capacity of Churches
At the moment, the regulation on social distancing requires that a reduced capacity exists in all churches. However, the Roadmap states that new sectors which will reopen on 17 May are “Some large events, including conferences, theatre and concert performances and sports events. Controlled indoor events of up to 1,000 people or 50% of a venue’s capacity.” This applies to single one-off events, moderated by the Local Authority, and not to regular worship in churches.
However, it is possible and advisable now to make a reassessment of the covid-secure capacity of churches based on the principles of combination prevention, specifically:
Based on these considerations, some churches may conclude they can safely increase the covid-secure capacity of the building factoring into the calculations the mitigations of coverings, ventilation and vaccines listed above (eg by making spacing 1m where there is good ventilation and good mitigation measures). In some churches, this reassessment may bring the covid-secure capacity up to 50% of that of the building.
Risk Assessments should be dynamic, i.e., they should be refreshed and revised as circumstances change in the locality for the better (lower prevalence and risk of transmission) or worse (higher transmission risk).
You can read the guidance in full by downloading the document below or visiting the CBCEW website here.
