CDC Issues New Guidance on How the Coronovirus Spreads

Yesterday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued new guidance on how the Coronovirus spreads which may have implications for your ministry. Now the CDC is alerting us to airborne transmission of Covid-19.

Please read below if your ministry meets in enclosed areas where people take off their masks to sing or sit and enjoy the service.

The emphasis is mine:

COVID-19 can sometimes be spread by airborne transmission

• Some infections can be spread by exposure to virus in small droplets and particles that can linger in the air for minutes to hours. These viruses may be able to infect people who are further than 6 feet away from the person who is infected or after that person has left the space.
• This kind of spread is referred to as airborne transmission and is an important way that infections like tuberculosis, measles, and chicken pox are spread.
• There is evidence that under certain conditions, people with COVID-19 seem to have infected others who were more than 6 feet away. These transmissions occurred within enclosed spaces that had inadequate ventilation. Sometimes the infected person was breathing heavily, for example while singing or exercising.

Under these circumstances, scientists believe that the amount of infectious smaller droplet and particles produced by the people with COVID-19 became concentrated enough to spread the virus to other people. The people who were infected were in the same space during the same time or shortly after the person with COVID-19 had left.