Pastor George Davis said it's always difficult to go through the grieving process with families in his church. But when eight people died in a two-week span from COVID-19, it presented an unprecedented challenge.
ABC News' Linsey Davis speaks with Pastor George Davis on the devastating impact delta variant cases have had on his Jacksonville church after losing eight members in two weeks.Pastor George Davis said it's always difficult to go through the grieving process with families in his church. But when seven people died in a two-week span fromHe told ABC News' Linsey Davis four of his late congregants were under the age of 35, and a number who died were unvaccinated.
In March, Davis' Impact Church in Jacksonville, Florida, hosted their first major vaccination event. Their building sits a few hundred yards from a space rented out by the state health department, but at the time very few people were getting vaccinated at the state's site."I put forth the premise that, 'Hey, people trust in this community, trust their church probably more than they would a government medical site, vaccination site,'" he said.
The church partnered with Duval County Health and University of Florida Health for the vaccinations and health workers."[UF Health] actually sent over a couple of educators so that even as people went over, if they had skepticism, if they had questions and they had theories that they heard they were going to talk to health professionals and let them answer those questions, dispel those myths," he said."We had almost 300 people actually ... 35% percent of those being teenagers.
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