How Your Church Should Respond to Long COVID

THROUGHOUT THE PANDEMIC, church attendance has varied wildly. As precautions have fluctuated with every ebb and flow of the virus, congregants have had to balance their attendance with health concerns—and this balancing act has proven even more complicated for high risk and immunocompromised parishioners.

Government officials and political figures now encourage citizens to “live with COVID.” The faithful may be puzzled by still-empty pews. Where are our neighbors? Have they lost faith? Or do they still “live in fear”? These assumptions fail to consider a more troubling reality: Some neighbors are suffering from long-term illness resulting from COVID-19.

Though recent viral variants have been touted as mild, reports show that many people who tested positive for COVID-19 can struggle with ongoing health problems. This condition, called “long COVID,” affects one in three people who came down with the virus and had symptoms for months following the initial infection. A 2021 study shows that 57 percent of people who contracted COVID-19 were still experiencing symptoms up to six months after testing positive—including cardiovascular issues, neurological problems, brain fog, muscle pain, and fatigue. For sufferers, long COVID is debilitating and life-altering.

In January, the Brookings Institution released a report estimating that the U.S. labor market may be missing 1.6 million full-time workers due to long COVID. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 31 million working-age Americans—more than one in seven—may be experiencing lingering symptoms.

Scientists continue to research therapies and treatments for sufferers, but progress is slow. Meantime, forums and advocacy groups proliferate online. Groups such as the Body Politic COVID-19 Support Group and Long COVID Alliance offer those experiencing ongoing symptoms a supportive community, advice, and treatment plans.

Still, these individuals continue to struggle. Chimére L. Smith is a patient advocate and consultant for Black long-COVID patients and a contributor to the forthcoming Long COVID Survival Guide. In April 2021, Smith testified before Congress about the physical, social, and financial effects of long COVID in Black people residing in urban communities. “I am now a Black woman with long COVID,” she said. She pledged to use her “experience to speak to and for Black, disabled women in urban communities in America with long Covid—millions of them I will never know or meet.”

While it is tempting to resume “normal” life and to ignore the empty pews and the medical complications of ailing congregants, we must resist this easy way out and instead heed the Christian call to care for the sick. Attending to those with long COVID—their physical, emotional, and mental needs—is a critical ministry for people of faith.

Congregations can provide education and support groups. Churches can learn about advocacy efforts led by those with long COVID and lend support. In consultation with those with long COVID, church leaders can incorporate disability advocacy into sermons while resisting rhetoric in speech and bulletins that minimizes the severity of COVID-19. In anticipation of newly disabled congregants, parishes should maintain virtual liturgies, reevaluate their compliance (though voluntary) with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and ensure other accessibilities. This may require a reinstatement of pandemic precautions, as those with lingering symptoms may be (rightfully) fearful to return and risk reinfection. Finally, the church should publicly repent from actions that have excluded disabled and chronically ill members from full participation at the communion table and take action to center their voices going forward.

Disability rights and inclusion activist Imani Barbarin calls the pandemic a “mass disabling event.” The need to care and advocate for those with long COVID is clear: “They” are “us.”