Limits on churches will end March 19

Starting March 19, Connecticut churches, mosques, temples and other house of worship will no longer be required to cap the number of people who attend in-person services.

But because houses of worship will still need to abide by social distancing requirements, some faith leaders suggested lifting the capacity limit won’t have an immediate impact, while one expert warned congregations will need to be cautious about letting their guard down in a communal gathering.

Brian Wallace, a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of

Bridgeport, said the elimination of the cap on houses of worship probably won’t affect many of the smaller churches, because the space needed for social distancing means many are already close to capacity.

Lifting the cap will likely benefit some of the state’s larger Catholic churches with higher indoor occupancy, Wallace said, including St. Charles Borromeo Church in Bridgeport and St. Theresa Church in Trumbull — which at a 1,200person occupancy is the largest church in the Diocese.

Announcing the decision at his twice-weekly pandemic briefing on Thursday, Gov. Ned Lamont

said masks and social distancing will still be required.

“And by the way, I’ve been to a few houses of worship in my day where more people are my age than your age, a little older — a lot more likely to have gotten vaccinated” said Lamont, 67. “I think we can do this in the houses of worship safely, provided you wear the mask and the distancing.”

But the real risk of allowing more people to attend religious services in-person may not be the service itself, so much as the coffee and cookie hour that follows.

“I am concerned about the culture — about the communing,” said Sten Vermund, dean of the Yale School of Public Health. “The tradition in many churches is people go to the nearby hall or basement, or wherever they have their cookies or coffee and talk.”

Such informal gatherings are a place where people “can let their guard down,” surrounded by people they may not have seen for several months, Vermund said. He used the analogy of attending a sporting event — while the stands themselves may not be a source of spread, gathering or getting dinner afterward could be.

The lifted restriction coincides with several major springs holidays — Passover, which starts March 27 and ends April 4; Easter Sunday on April 4, and the start of Ramadan on April 12.

“I think just like any of these reopenings there’s a balance,” said Dr. David Banach, head of infection prevention at UConn Health. He noted there is a real need for communities to hold religious gatherings, but those who attend should continue to be mindful of social distancing and wearing masks.

Both Vermund and Banach said it may be prudent for houses of worship to avoid singing or shouting, which studies have shown can project droplets from a potentially infected person much farther than talking.

Rabbi David Reiner of Congregation Shir Sholom in Ridgefield said even with the expanded limits on capacity, most services in-person have remained small. With funerals, families have asked for small gatherings. The last holiday that drew a significant number of worshippers were the Jewish high holy days in the fall, during which the age of attendees ranged from infants to those in their 90s, Reiner said.

The decision to lift the cap comes as Connecticut’s positivity rate and hospitalizations for COVID-19 have been trending downward for several weeks.

The state’s daily COVID-19 numbers released Thursday and Friday both showed one-day positivity rates below 2 percent, the lowest it has been for several weeks. And the statewide census of patients hospitalized for the illness fell to 428 on Friday, the lowest it’s been since the first week of November.

Eman Beshtawii, president of the Al Hedaya Islamic Center in Newtown, said she believes lifting the cap will gradually increase turnout of the center’s programs leading up to Ramadan, in mid-April. Some of those programs will continue to be held outdoors, including the center’s Eid al-Fitr gathering in midMay, which marks the end of Ramadan.

“Based on the advice of medical doctors in our community who have been actively serving COVID cases at local hospitals and urgent care clinics, we plan to move very cautiously while following social distancing and use of masks,” Beshtawii said.