The Franconia UMC Healthy Church Team met on January 27th to discuss the status of regional COVID infections and whether it is safe to contemplate resuming in-person worship. Based on a review of the current rate and the downward trend in positivity level and hospitalizations, the Healthy Church Team has concluded that we will be able to again hold in-person worship, barring an unforeseen surge, beginning on Sunday, February 6th.
We want to emphasize the need to ensure social distancing and masking to ensure that all efforts are taken to mitigate the possibility of transmission while in the sanctuary. We will again be marking off the pews to encourage appropriate social distancing, and we strongly encourage those attending in-person worship to consider wearing an N95, KN95, KF94 or similar multiple layer mask, as those have been determined by doctors to be most effective in preventing the spread of the Omicron virus. In the alternative, you may want to consider “double masking.”
The Healthy Church Team will be continually monitoring the positivity rate along with other relevant factors as the COVID variants persist to ensure that decisions concerning in-person worship and church-related functions are made with a sensitivity to the health and safety of all in our congregation. We appreciate your flexibility in these unprecedented times and your resiliency in the challenges that this pandemic has caused for nearly the last two years. Please continue to pray for our church, our community, and the Healthy Church Team as we go forward.