Pastor claims his church is not a COVID-19 hot spot. KY health official disagrees.
The pastor of an Independent Fundamental Baptist church in Jessamine County, where at least 18 members have been diagnosed with COVID-19, insisted on social media Monday night that there’s “no evidence” to suggest his church is a hot spot.
A local public health official said that’s inaccurate.
Clays Mill Baptist Church Pastor Jeff Fugate, in a Facebook post Monday evening, said “there is no evidence that anyone contracted the virus at our church. That was only an ‘insinuation’ by the media.”
Late last week, the Herald-Leader reported an outbreak at the church, where at least 17 attendees had tested positive for the novel coronavirus. By Tuesday, another Clays Mill member had tested positive, bringing the total to at least 18.
In his post, Fugate said, “They may have got the virus at a grocery store or another place of business that they had visited.”
Jessamine County Public Health Director Randy Gooch explained Tuesday afternoon why that’s improbable.
The church is “most definitely” a “hot spot,” he said. “I think it’s pretty naive to think that they’re not connected.”
While it is impossible to know for certain how and when each person contracted the virus in this case, “I think it would be naive to think that you’ve got 18 cases in people that are all connected to the same location, the same entity, [and] think they’re not connected,” he said.
When someone tests positive for COVID-19, a public health department deploys disease investigators, generally called contact tracers, to determine who that person had contact with and may have spread the virus to, and where they were. Swift steps are taken to try and isolate the person who tested positive and quarantine their direct contacts to prevent further spread of the virus.
“During our disease investigations, we do the best we can to try to trace back to where the disease was contracted,” Gooch said. “When our investigation all leads back to a certain link” — in this case, Clays Mill Baptist — “then we have to assume that that is the place it was contracted.”
He said it’s reasonable to assume that “at least one individual attended church [while] sick” and spread it to others, and it’s “naive to think [the hot spot] is not related to their gathering there.”
In-person services for staff and their families resumed on May 10, about a week and a half shy of when the state had planned to allow it. A pair of federal judges issued rulings two days before, on May 8, that upheld a challenge to Beshear’s moratorium on in-person worship services. Those decisions superseded state orders, allowing any willing church to resume in-person services immediately.
Fugate pastored to people in his pews until May 24, all of which were streamed live on Facebook. He opted to resume virtual services on Wednesday, May 27, saying from the pulpit that there were “quite a few folks [who] have been feeling poorly” and “several people” had tested positive for the virus, most of whom didn’t have symptoms.
Clays Mill, where Fugate has pastored for nearly 30 years, is just over the Fayette County line in Nicholasville. In late April, Fugate appeared with state Attorney General Daniel Cameron in a press conference calling on the governor to rescind his executive order barring churches from meeting in person.
During his Monday news conference at the Capitol, Beshear recalled that event, saying Fugate stood with Cameron and said, “‘Governor, we can do this safely.’”
“Well, he couldn’t,” Beshear quipped.
“Let’s make sure that when any facility, not just a house of worship, is opened, that we are truly ready and that we take the guidance seriously,” Beshear said. “That you don’t just give lip service to these guidelines.”
Fugate criticized Beshear later Monday night in his post, saying Beshear’s “bias and misinformation against ‘church’ is too obvious.”
“When I stood with Attorney General Cameron for the Constitutional right of the church to open I said then and I say now, I want my people to be safe and healthy first,” Fugate said.
Fugate said Clays Mill “was not closed down by anyone. It was me, personally, who decided to close the church for a couple weeks. The media took that to mean that there was an outbreak at our church and you believed it and repeated it. Not true,” he wrote to Beshear. “But it was another opportunity for you to show your bias once again.”
It is true that Fugate volunteered to return to virtual services until June 21 out of worry for his congregants, Gooch said.
The rest is “unfortunate,” he said. When “you’ve got 18 [positive] cases in people that are all connected to the same location, the same entity,” Gooch said, “I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”
This story was originally published June 9, 2020 at 3:16 PM.
