In A Bone To Evangelicals, CDC Drops Warning About COVID-19 Risks In Choirs

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday suddenly dropped its warning about the risk of choirs spreading COVID-19 at religious services after being told to do so by White House officials, The Washington Post reported.

The warning was omitted even though choirs can become “super-spreader” events infecting large groups of people at once. Singing can increase the intensity of “aerosol emission” of the coronavirus. Nearly all 61 members of a choir in Washington state became infected with COVID-19 after a single rehearsal in March, a CDC study found. Two people died.

The CDC just last Friday issued safety guidelines for restarting religious services. It recommended then that religious communities “consider suspending or at least decreasing use of choir/musical ensembles and congregant singing, chanting, or reciting during services or other programming.” (The original guidelines are available via web archive.)

The “act of singing may contribute to transmission of COVID-19, possibly through emission of aerosols,” the CDC warned.

But those guidelines suddenly vanished.

Sources told the Post that the CDC was ordered by White House officials to make the change.

But a source insisted to NPR that the CDC “posted the wrong version of the guidance,” adding: “The version that is currently up on the website is the version cleared by the White House.”

The guidelines no longer recommend suspending choirs. Now the CDC simply urges that faith-based organizations promote “social distancing at services and other gatherings, ensuring that clergy, staff, choir, volunteers and attendees at the services follow social distancing ... to lessen their risk.”

Communicable disease expert Lea Hamner of Skagit County Public Health, the lead author of the CDC Washington choir report, told NPR she is worried about the changes — and reopening houses of worship.

“As a public health official, I would strongly encourage that