Join First Church member Dr. Rebecca Fielding-Miller on June 21 at 6 pm to learn about the results of our recent congregational COVID-19 priority survey. This townhall will cover stated congregational priorities, recommended strategies to keep ourselves safe, and some recent updates on scientific knowledge on the state of the pandemic. Dr. Fielding-Miller is an Assistant Professor of Public Health at the UC San Diego School of Public Health, with a joint appointment in the UCSD School of Medicine, Division of Infectious Disease and Global Public Health. She holds a PhD in public health from Emory University, and a Masters of Science in Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Join the Meeting at https://bit.ly/C19SurveyResults

By Nina Douglass, South Bay Food Pantry Volunteer
The parking lot of 907 Broadway is like that of any other Chula Vista strip mall on weekdays.  On Saturdays, however, the lot is transformed by hundreds of South Bay Food Pantry volunteers and clients.  Volunteers arrive by 8am to receive and stage hundreds of pounds of canned and other dry goods, fresh produce and Starbucks bakery items from the big Feeding San Diego truck. By then, many pantry guests are already waiting for the 9am distribution of numbers which serve to organize the line-up for the 11am - 12:30pm food distribution.  The few trees at the site provide welcome shade for people waiting to collect their food.

PROGRESS: The reopening Team met on Saturday March 5 to review together what we currently know about Covid in our area and the direction things are trending. Based on our discussion we are ready to recommend the following:

• Worship services should continue to be outdoors and masked at least through the rest of March.
• Based on steadily shrinking Covid cases and changed recommendations nationally and in our area, we are comfortable expanding our worship services to include singing and social hour following the service.
• Based on all that we know about Covid transmission and our awareness that some among us still cannot be effectively vaccinated, we recommend that singing outdoors continues to be masked, and that social hour follow “airplane rules,” that is, we remain masked except when actively taking a sip or a bite.
• We recommend that our staff begin working toward an eventual return to indoor worship by reviewing all the infrastructure and staff needs to do so, knowing that after two  years away from what was once “normal”, there will be considerable logistical efforts involved in returning inside.
• Knowing that there are multiple levels of vulnerability among us and widely varying perspectives on risk, we will continue to offer livestreaming as an option even after our eventual return to indoor worship. At that point, we will also offer a third option of viewing worship services from the patio for those wishing to remain outdoors.
• We support our South Bay campus in moving forward at the same pace as the Hillcrest campus, knowing that there are also additional logistical concerns having to do with the Food Pantry. Our staff and volunteers have these issues well in hand.
  

On a key point about infrastructure, skilled people have set up a complex facility outdoors to livestream our worship services. Deciding to move indoors will involve rebuilding all of that in the meeting house. That's a huge effort, hard to undo if an upsurge were to force us back out again. So we're working first on more and more happening outdoors before services move indoors. We'll continue with the livestream option open to everyone, no matter what. We're a solid, loving community. This is a time of trauma recovery, but we're in this together and definitely continuing to make progress.

We'll be back together again for in-person, outdoor worship services on the patio at our Hillcrest campus! Masked, reasonably distanced, and with a clear expectation that all who can do so will be fully vaccinated. This includes a booster.

• But no one is excluded and we'll do no checking about vaccination status.
• All masks must be N95, KN95, or KF94 types, fully covering the nose and mouth. No cloth masks will be allowed. Masks will be provided if needed.
• We trust everyone to use good judgement and we welcome persons of all ages.
• The overall rating for our area and California in general has dropped down to the "Very High" level. It's not down to "High," which we had hoped to reach, but we're convinced by the trends and by the real need for all of us to be together again.
• We know some among us are still struggling, due to being immunocompromised or other issues. We understand. And we hope you will find a comfortable place amidst our decisions.
• Our front-line staff have special, heightened concerns as well. We're trying to reach a balance. We realize we can't avoid all risk and prevent all possibility of infection.
• South Bay presents further issues since there is no designated, regular outdoor space for worship services. We hope the decisions for Hillcrest can guide decisions that will later be made about South Bay's services.
• Any time after resuming in-person services on the 27th we believe it will be OK for outdoor, in-person meetings to resume - in groups of no more than 15 - masked, distanced, and with high expectations about being fully vaccinated.
• Likewise, singing choirs and the handbell choir may exercise their own judgements about resuming practices, while acknowledging the special risks of spreading this air-borne disease through singing. We will not resume congregational singing at this time.
• We're taking some big steps about being together, which makes us happy. But we'll continue to watch many numbers carefully.

Q. When can we all meet, in-person and outdoors?
Q. When can our choirs rehearse outdoors?
A. We're looking at the end of this month.
Risk levels in San Diego are still "Severe," but we believe a drop, even down to "High," could be enough for us to meet outdoors safely. The team will meet on February 12 to make decisions about in-person outdoor services for late Feb. and early March. Our best guess about when the Omicron wave will pass its peak is anywhere between now and March 1.

​Down the road, a further risk-level drop to some fraction of "High" could be enough for us to okay meeting indoors, though we have no guess about that timeframe. We do know that waiting to reach "Medium" could be forever, so that's not our goal.