Worship services and other religious acts should not last longer than 30 minutes from Thursday, January 7th.
These are new restrictions for Denmark’s religious community, which has been issued by the Ministry of Church Affairs. They are valid until and including 17 January.
The tightened restrictions have been decided because there is a risk of widespread societal infection as a result of a more contagious corona mutation from the UK.
According to the guidelines, services, masses and Friday prayers can continue to be held. The same goes for baptisms, bat mitzvahs and funerals.
But they must follow a set of rules.
For example, each participant must have 7.5 square meters of floor space. There must be a minimum distance of two meters between participants who are not from the same household. And it should be considered at all whether common singing can be dispensed with.
– The precondition for limiting the spread of infection in Denmark is that Danes continue to comply with the health authorities’ recommendations.
– Here, the church and other denominations have a great responsibility to ensure that the spread of infection is minimized, the guidelines state.
The stricter requirements for space per person mean that there can be about four times fewer participants than the current area requirements allow.
At outdoor funerals and funerals, the opportunity to gather 50 people is maintained.
However, the rules only apply when it comes to “central parts of worship”, writes the Ministry of Church Affairs.
Other activities – both outdoors and indoors – may, on the other hand, gather a maximum of five people.
– This means that most other activities will have to be canceled, but that you can, for example, keep the church room open for personal prayer and reflection for a maximum of five people at a time, the guidelines state.
The restrictions have been agreed in a collaboration between the ministry and representatives of the church’s employees, pastors, bishops and parish councils.
Source: The Nordic Page