A growing number of churches and cathedrals are offering their city and town-centre buildings to be converted into mass vaccination and Covid testing centres, even though it could mean restricting worship for a year.
As authorities press ahead with logistical plans for the country’s biggest ever public health programme, the Church of England said offers by churches to turn over their buildings were “a great act of service and witness”.
But the C of E also warned that requirements were “likely to be quite demanding” and that many church properties were unsuitable.
In guidance issued to clergy and church officials, the C of E said: “Most of the vaccination hubs being set up are expecting to process upwards of 1,000 people a day – they need large spaces that are not needed for any other purposes, and that can be kept for the purposes of vaccinations for up to a year.”
Blackburn cathedral is expected to open as a mass vaccination centre in the next two weeks. Public health officials are turning the cathedral’s 1,300 square metre crypt into a “sort of field hospital”, said Peter Howell -Jones, the dean.
The vaccination centre will be open 12 hours a day, seven days a week. “Our location is perfect – two minutes’ walk from the train station, three minutes’ walk from the bus station, and we have five car parks around us,” Howell-Jones said.
The cathedral will be unable to use its crypt for at least a year, although activities in the main part of the building, including worship, will be unaffected.
Rochester cathedral, in Kent, the second oldest in England, opened last week as a community rapid-testing centre for people without Covid symptoms who live in a high-risk area.
The army has installed 10 booths in the cathedral’s crypt, which was restored with lottery funding four years ago, and an additional accessible booth outside. The testing centre will be capable of processing hundreds of people every day of the week, and they will get their test results within an hour.
Medway, which encompasses Rochester, currently has one of the highest Covid infection rates in the country, with more than 600 cases per 100,000 people.
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The cathedral was founded in 604, with the oldest parts of the current building dating from 1080. “The crypt will be effectively sealed off, so we can still have a limited number of services in the nave,” said Simon Lace, the chapter clerk.
“There’s been so little we’ve been able to do during the pandemic, so we were keen to help. We want the cathedral to be seen as the centre of the community, for people of all faiths or no faith, and this is a great way to demonstrate that.”
The C of E advised churches and cathedrals that they must be able to dedicate space to vaccination and testing programmes, ensure they had adequate toilet facilities and easy access to water and electricity supplies, consider public transport routes and parking space, and be accessible.
Sarah Mullally, the bishop of London, who chairs a C of E committee on the pandemic, said churches had supported communities and local health providers by hosting food banks and storing PPE for hospitals. “I know that this work will continue as we recover from the pandemic, and churches will find ways to support vaccination programmes in the UK and around the world,” she said.
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