Sacramento County and Slavic church agree to collaborate on coronavirus outreach
A week after criticizing a Sacramento-area Slavic church as an epicenter for COVID-19 cases, county health officials said Thursday they held a productive phone call with church leaders on working together to stem the spread of coronavirus in the Slavic community.
Leaders of Bethany Slavic Missionary Church initiated the 45-minute conference call, which took place on Wednesday, county spokeswoman Janna Haynes said. The county said the call marked the beginning of a “collaboration” to reach members of the region’s massive Slavic community with messages about the virus.
”We’re looking to them to help us continue to build trust in that community,” Haynes said.
The county also hopes Bethany Slavic, on a large campus near Rancho Cordova in southeast Sacramento County, will reopen its food bank, which the church said it closed in the face of public criticism of the church’s activities.
Last week the county revealed that 71 people linked to the church, including church members and their friends and family, had contracted the coronavirus. Even though the church had stopped holding in-person services, as required, officials said many church members were still meeting on their own, in violation of “stay at home” orders.
Peter Beilenson, the county’s health services director, said last week that church officials had told county officials to leave them alone. The church responded to a report in The Sacramento Bee with a blistering denial, saying the county had misstated the church’s actions, and that the incident had elicited hatred against the church and its members.
Haynes said church and county leaders focused their discussions this week on moving forward “and not rehash what happened last week.”
A joint county and church statement issued on Thursday noted that there is a large outbreak of COVID-19 in the Slavic community, but not all positive cases are members of the church. The 3,500-member church’s founder and lead pastor, the Rev. Adam Bondaruk, 76, and his wife, Galina, are among those infected with the coronavirus.
The statement concluded: “Sacramento County does not condone ridicule, hatred or violence toward this church, our Slavic residents and Slavic health care workers on the front lines of this public health crisis.”
This story was originally published April 9, 2020 at 4:49 PM.