County Resolution 2021-15 'Free to Choose' went into effect on Friday, April 16. Under this resolution, individuals and businesses within Mesa County are able to decide for themselves which health precautions to make use of.

 

As Orthodox Christians, we value the life and well-being of our brothers and sisters in Christ over our own personal comfort and convenience. Our faith has never emphasized individual freedom over our personal responsibility to care for our community. Our freedom consists in our God-given ability to choose either to follow God's will for our lives, or not to do so. God's will for our lives is made clear in the Gospel: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself," (Luke 19:27).

 

We can see from Mesa County's current COVID data that our transmission numbers have been increasing since mid-March. We are currently at levels of transmission that we have not seen since our last spike ended in February. We know that there is currently a rise in the level of outbreaks occurring in nursing homes throughout Colorado. There is also concern about COVID variants against which the current vaccines may or may not be effective. All of this means that another spike in COVID cases like we saw in late 2020 remains a very real possibility. This makes the timing of our current rollback of health precautions unfortunate.

 

For these reasons, combined with the particularly vulnerable demographic of our congregation, our Parish Council at St. Nicholas has decided to keep our current health precautions in place for the time being. As a reminder, those precautions are the following:

 

• Individuals who have been exposed to the Coronavirus, or are at high risk as defined by the CDC (unvaccinated persons 65-years or older, those with compromised immune systems, those with respiratory illness, heart conditions, or other underlying medical conditions) are encouraged to stay at home.
• A distance of six feet must be observed between families at all times.
• Use of non-medical masks is required when moving around the Church building.
• There will be no fellowship hour following Liturgy. Parishioners are asked to depart the Church in an orderly fashion following the dismissal.
• Icons are to be venerated by crossing oneself and bowing. Please do not kiss the icons.

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