California Coronavirus: After the crowd gathers for a conference without masks, officials ask them to quarantine


The people who attended the Wednesday night Christian Faith and Music event in Redding are being asked by the Shasta County Health Department to be quarantined for 14 days, tested and monitored for possible symptoms.

“While outdoor faith meetings are permitted, this event did not follow state guidelines,” such as people who stood 6 feet away or wearing masks when that is not possible, and therefore the event “put our community at risk, “the county agency said in a statement. launching.
The event was publicized by Hold The Line, a faith-based political activist movement created by Sean Feucht, a Christian worship musician in Northern California who ran and lost in the March primaries for third place in the Congressional District of state.
Wednesday event at Redding.
A 42-minute video posted by Hold The Line shows some people stretching, especially on embankments, but many of them are still very close together and don’t wear masks.

After receiving criticism from social media and county health officials for hosting the event, Feucht released an online statement defending it.

“Government leaders have expressed their support for open-air protests in recent months; they should not condemn Christians seeking to gather in worship,” their publication says.

“Masks were made available, social distancing was encouraged, and the meeting was held outside as an added precaution.

“The freedom to worship God is the constitutional right of all American citizens, and those who exercise this right should not be subject to unfair criticism.”

What California’s coronavirus restrictions say

California has enacted a series of social distancing rules and activity bans, some of which deal with indoor and outdoor religious gatherings, while trying to curb recent spikes in coronavirus cases.
Outdoor worship services are allowed, with restrictions. The state says that, at a minimum, outdoor attendants who are not from the same home must be at least 6 feet away.
CDC's new guidelines are difficult in favor of opening schools
Additionally, the state requires people to wear facial covers outdoors when it is not possible to distance themselves, regardless of whether they are in a religious gathering.
Feucht previously told Los Angeles television station KTTV that he has been holding outdoor events such as Wednesday in response to the state’s even stricter pandemic rules for indoor worship.
How strict the rules are depends on the county’s infection data. California currently has about 30 counties on a coronavirus “watch list” for having high rates of Covid-19 infections or related data. Those counties must temporarily ban indoor worship.

Counties not on the list, such as Shasta County, which had 268 confirmed coronavirus cases as of Thursday, allow limited indoor worship. Indoor singing and singing are prohibited, and indoor attendance is limited to 25% of capacity or 100 people, whichever is less.

The Shasta County health agency said Thursday it is sympathetic to “all who have had to change the way they worship in the past few months.” But she noted that other groups have sacrificed.

“Our students have sacrificed traditional graduations, and people have had to postpone weddings and celebrate funerals without the presence of loved ones,” the agency said. “Local businesses continue to fight. If Shasta County ends up on the state watch list, our children will not be allowed to return to school in person, and our businesses and churches will face more restrictions.”

Statewide, more than 12,000 new cases of coronavirus were reported Thursday, the second highest daily number during the pandemic.

Officials suggest they were misled about the event beforehand.

The county health agency and the Redding city government suggested in statements that they were misled about the magnitude of the event before it happened.

The latest on the coronavirus pandemic

The county agency said Redding officials “were confident that the event would involve social estrangement.”

The city government’s statement says it did not approve the event beforehand, in part because it did not believe the concert would reach the level of needing approval.

The city has the right to assemble peacefully without approval, the city said, but a permit is required “when the organizer requests special services or waivers.”

“This was not supposed to be the case at the (Wednesday) meeting,” the city said.

Feucht did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. On Facebook, Feucht wrote that she shared her “plans with the city council … (and) they asked me to contact the local health department.”

“We did that and never received a response. I assumed it was enough and that we had the green light,” he wrote.

The county health agency said event organizers never contacted him. But after hearing about the event, “he came up and … called the social distancing requirements for outdoor services,” he said.

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