Starting this weekend, City Harvest Church, a controversial 16,000-member megachurch in Singapore, has suspended all physical meetings and will instead meet online as the global coronavirus outbreak surged to more than 64,000 cases Friday.
The number of COVID-19 (formal name of coronavirus) cases in Singapore has risen to at least 58 cases.
“In view of the increasing number of cases of COVID-19 this past week, we have decided the best thing for our congregation is to bring service online. This means, we do NOT meet physically at Suntec for service, but stay home and worship online together through The CHC App or our website,” the church announced in a statement Thursday.
Mainland China, the epicenter of the new disease, which is accompanied by symptoms that may include a fever, coughing or shortness of breath, has recorded 5,090 more cases, bringing the global total to 64,435 CNN reported. At least 1,383 people, including three outside mainland China, have died from the disease.
Singapore, a nation of just 5.7 million, has one of the highest number of coronavirus cases outside of China. And while no one in Singapore has died yet from the disease, Janil Puthucheary, senior minister of state at Singapore’s Ministry of Transport and Ministry of Communications and Information, warned that the country should prepare for more infections.
“I think it’s really too early to talk about a peak. Cases are coming in on a daily basis and you have to have the expectation there are going to be more cases over the next few weeks,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia.”
“The issue is really whether these are going to be cases that are linked to the existing spread, existing cluster, links to China or whether we have an increasing number of cases that are unlinked community spread … At the moment, most of the cases can be linked back to known clusters,” he added.
SOURCE: Christian Post, Leonardo Blair
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