Transcript:
Hi, this is Dr. Hamilton-Stubbs from Dr. Hamilton-Stubbs' Sleep and Total Wellness Institute and I am doing a 10-minute COVID-19 update. I started on this to help my patients, but I expand it to help in my role as the Health Committee Chair for the Virginia State Conference of the NAACP and also as the chair for the Virginia Association of Ministers Wives and Ministers Widows. And what I'm focusing on is places of worship: planning to reopen. So today I want to talk about the responsibilities of the worshipers and the responsibilities of the church. We won't be able to get through all of the responsibilities of the church so we'll start with the worshipers and then we'll see how far we can get with the responsibilities of places of worship.
Preparing your worshipers for returning to church should take a little time and you will have to decide among yourselves how much time you need to dedicate to the preparation of people to come back to a changed environment. See we're not going back to worship as we had been doing, but we can still worship. We can worship even if we can't get back into the sanctuary. But getting back into the sanctuary is something that we might be able to do if the number of cases are going down in your area and people want to do it. So you want to make sure people understand that we've not anchored to a building. We are anchored to our being with our Lord and our Savior and if you happen to be a Christian that's with God and God is everywhere. So you want to tell the worshipers to prepare mentally that they may be able to come back in, but they might not. And if they're going to come back in they have to be some guidelines in place.
So some people are resistant to wear a mask. They just don't like wearing a mask. Some people think that it is their right not to wear masks, but let the worshipers know this is not about you. It is about other people. And that's what we do, we come into our places of worship to learn how to serve our community and during this pandemic, one of the ways we can serve our community is by decreasing the risk that we will spread a virus that we may not even know we have to someone else and cause them harm. So everyone should be encouraged to wear a mask. We also need to encourage people to practice social distancing. Now the length, the distance that we need to be is really dependent on what's going on, but if you're just talking casually is six feet. If you are singing which is not recommended or loud worshiping, you may need to be even farther away because the aerosolization of the virus will make it travel, will allow it to travel beyond six feet. Encouraged frequent hand-washing and make it easy for people by having sanitizer in your purse or sanitizing stations should be placed around the sanctuary. Avoid touching your face nose and your eyes. And there may be this tendency to want to go and grab the people that you love because you haven't had a chance to see them, you have to love people enough not to hug because you remember, we have practicing social distancing. And don't forget that you need to disinfect areas daily. So if you're at home, disinfect your countertops, your light switches, your doorknobs, and even wipe your floors down. I like a beach solution because it is more economical.
A very important thing for each worshiper to do is to monitor your own health. You need to know the signs and symptoms of a coronavirus infection or COVID-19. So if you're experiencing some of these symptoms: fever and chills, fatigue, having muscle aches, lost a sense of smell which is new, a sore throat, congestion or runny nose, coughing, shortness of breath, difficulty breathing, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, if you have persistent pain or pressure in your chest, feeling a little confused, difficulty concentrating, inability to stay awake which is new to you, or if you notice that you're having some discoloration in your lips, in your face that's kind of bluish. These are all signs that you really need to seek medical advice and avoid returning to church or the company of other people. Now this may be a lot for us to remember. You can have a little checklist that you just looked at before you venture off into the place of worship or if you have access to the Center for Disease Control's website either on your smartphone or computer or some other device. Go to the Center for Disease website go under COVID and look for the COVID-19 checker. It's a digital tool that allows you to put in the symptoms that you may be experiencing and it will let you know if you are at risk for having an infection. And if you find out that you are, do everyone a favor and do not come to your place of worship.
For the places of worship, this is a little bit more than you may realize and it may take several people to help implement the recommendations from the Center for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, and your local health departments and state health department's guidelines. So I think it's best to have a team approach and to divide the work into pre-planning and then the precautions that need to be taken during worship and safety precautions after you worship. So suggested team member duties and you can decide among yourselves if this should be divided up with one person or if one person can handle a couple of these duties. For example, I think it's good to have one person looking at the CDC's website and one person looking at the World Health Organization website for covered updates that's because the updates come out very frequently and you wanted the person to be able to keep up with those updates. You need someone that's going to review your state and local health department's websites. This is going to tell you about laws that would affect your place of worship and don't forget we can look at our elected officials websites to find out when they're going to have town halls that will share information about the coronavirus and COVID-19. Some elected officials like your state senator or your Congress person or your governor may have information. Our governor in Virginia does updates and he does them twice a week and this is very useful. So you might need to have a person who is going to be dedicated to looking at those updates because to have one person doing all that, that person could get busy, that person could get sick from things that are not even related to COVID-19 and they won't be able to keep up with the information.
I think it's good to have someone that's going to organize team meetings for the pre planning team and then someone who will record the minutes and the recommendations that are going to be made and then someone who will disseminate that information. Dissemination of information is a little different. If you wanted to get there quickly, I suggest electronic means but some people don't have electronic ways to get information and some of our older worshipers are not using electronic means so they will need to have things mailed to them. Or if you are the type of place of worship that goes to people's homes, then you would take this but make sure that social distancing and the CDC guidelines are being practiced when you're handing the information or leaving it somewhere in the door where the person can get them get that information. So suggestions for dissemination of information for other people would be using email, use social media, telephone calls. That's the old-fashioned telephone tree and that is very good because especially with our seniors it gives you a chance to talk and connect with other people. Posters: have someone to make posters that are going to be placed around the church or your place of worship and even outside the building so people will be aware before they come in of some of the things that they're going to need to do. Like practice social distancing, staying six feet apart, let people know that even though you may have a favorite place that you like to sit in the place of worship, that may not be possible at this time. So be flexible and sit where the ushers are directing you to sit. Consider having a church or a place of worship newsletter. Put it on the place of worships website and you can also do a podcast. I like podcasts because people can listen while they do other things so podcasts are pretty easy to make. We have one on our website and the entire talk that I'm doing in different parts is going to be in one part on our website. I like the idea of developing small groups. If you don't know how to develop small groups I've included some links to places that give you information on developing small groups and a ebook that is available for free to download at www.drhamiltonstubbs.com/covid-19. And that is the abbreviated doctor: D. R. I like a small group because people may be more comfortable sharing their concerns in small groups. And it also gives each worshiper someone they can contact if they have questions or want certain things to discuss. Zoom platforms or similar platforms are also very popular. And some of us are not using those, but we are becoming more effecting is using them. I know certain platforms will allow you to use them without charge if you stay under a certain time limit. Don't forget telephone conference calls I like to use freeconferencecall.com but there may not be other platforms when you use the free conference calls some people may incur a small fee. So you want to know let them know that their mobile network may charge a small fee. You can also do Facebook live events like we're doing now. So we talked a little bit about taking in some mental health considerations and if you have access to someone within your congregation or within the network of places of worship, the Association, I say contact that person and see if they won't give some tips on what people can do to get mentally prepared to transition into a new form of worship. Talk about the changes to the worship procedure during your telephone conference calls or other means of talking and among your small group members and email the information about how changes will occur, what changes will happen prior to the first service. Post the changes of the worship procedures in places like the website for the place of worship. So I have divided the pre-planning into step one which is considerations for reopening when to resume reopening your place of worship I think should be done on an individual basis based on what is happening in your locality. For example if your community, for us it might be Northern Virginia. If your community is having a lot of cases of COVID-19 it may be more risky for you to open up your place of worship then compared to an area that might be less populated and they don't have cases being reported. You can find out how many cases are occurring in your area by going to the CDC website. I'm sorry you can go to the Virginia Department of Health website in Virginia and it has a way for you to find your county and see how many cases are occurring. So when you decide that you want to open up you're going to need to schedule increase cleaning.
Some people want to know do I need to hire a special cleaning service? The answer is no, but it depends so you must consider that you're going to do your regular cleaning, but you also need to do disinfecting and cleaning. And disinfecting is not the same thing. Cleaning is to remove the dirt. If you don't do your dusting and you're vacuuming or the usual things that you do to wipe down areas that have gotten dirty when you come to disinfect your disinfecting won't be as efficient. So you want to clean the area first and then disinfect. I like using a solution of Clorox bleach and I use the recommendation that's on the CDC's website. So you want to have people that are going to do that cleaning and it may be too much for just that usual group of people unless you have to able to divide that up. You want to replace the commonly used items with disposable things. For example, if you like having a hymn. No, it's not recommended to have those now. So if you can project the songs or just tell people ahead of time these are the songs
and send it to them electronically. The last thing would be if you want to print it out, but just take in mind that this will be something that needs to be disposed of and we would be probably not environmentally friendly if we all just started making extra paper copies of things. So electronic is good and projecting onto a wall where people can see the agenda for the service how it's going to flow. Take an inventory of your commonly used items so that you don't overlook things and then try to replace those. For example, if you are using fans people will have to bring their own things to have something that person can use and it's not going to be reused unless it can be disinfected. And you want to have your alternative things to be easily cleaned sanitize or disinfected. Think about the microphone. If you have more than one person speaking is recommended that you have more than one microphone if you cannot disinfect that microphone between the speakers. Whenever you bring in chemicals you want to make sure that you have safe precautions on storing those chemicals. So read the label for hazards for example some people have placed their hand sanitizers in areas where it gets too hot and the hand sanitizers are caught on fire. So read the label on safe storage. All chemicals should be locked up, because if you have young people in your congregation they may get curious and start to use some of these chemicals. That could be quite dangerous.
You want to prepare for vulnerable populations. These will be people with chronic diseases, liver disease, kidney disease, diabetes, obesity, immune compromised, anyone has been diagnosed with cancer, any kind of blood disorders. These are considered vulnerable populations as well as people over 65. Prepare for them so that they might want to sit in a separate area if they're if it's possible, but you want to know who they are and you want to make sure they all have mask. If they don't have one maybe you can prepare to give some out when people come to the place of worship. Promote the health and hygiene practices. Promote hand-washing and it's 20 seconds and some people say seeing the Happy Birthday song twice. Now listen to some people online talking about how they are practicing good hand hygiene by washing their hands, but they are watching long enough. It's recommended that you use a soap that will give you a good lather and wash your hands for 20 seconds. You don't need to get an antiseptic or antibacterial soap. If you wash your hands a lot with these very strong antibacterial soaps your hands can become irritated. So a dove soap, Ivy soap, or a natural soap as long as it lathers and wash your hands for 20 seconds and have disposable ways to dry your hands or use a an air dryer. Have adequate supplies to support the healthy hygiene behavior. Including your soap hand sanitizer that's at least 60% alcohol, have extra tissues in your place of worship, and some no-touch trash cans. You also want to make sure there when people are leaving the restroom or any place where there's a door, that you can make it so they do not have to touch a doorknob. You might want to invest in electronic door openings or there's a little device that you can get and attach to the door where you can use your arm and not your hand. Post signs on how to stop the spread and this is available on the CDC's website and promote wearing a mask and the protective cough. Some people like to cough in their hands and this is not recommended because the virus will be on your hand and it's not known but it's suspected that that coronavirus will be contagious like other viruses when you touch something it will live on the surface for it appear a period of time and someone coming behind you may touch that area. So have extra tissues and teach people to use a tissue to cough into and then throw that tissue away.
That's all that we have for today. That's all the time we have for today, so I'll see you next week and we'll talk a little bit more about preparing your place of worship for reopening. It's been my blessing to talk to you and I thank you for tuning in may God have mercy on us all.