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A new study is challenging health evidence that led a worldwide choir ban during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Choir practices and performances were forbidden for 18 months after a damning health report into one of the first US Covid-19 outbreaks among a church choir.
Fifty-three people who attended the March 2020 choir practice developed symptoms. The local health department concluded that one person who later tested positive — and who had shown signs of a cold beforehand — was probably the source of the infection.
Hundreds of scientific papers went on to quote the investigation.
All claimed the March 2020 Skagit Valley Chorale rehearsal was one of the pandemic’s first so-called super-spreader events.
Three UK universities have been studying the so-called “super-spreader’s” epidemiological curve. They found in most cases, infection occurred two to four days before the choir practice. In a nutshell, Covid was already rife in the community.
“We show it is vanishingly unlikely that this was a single point source outbreak as widely claimed and on which modelling has been based,” says the study.
“An unexamined assumption has led to erroneous policy conclusions about the risks of singing, and indoor spaces more generally, and the benefits of increased levels of ventilation.”
The choir ban affected innumerable people and caused great suffering to those implicated in spreading the virus, the study notes.
In the UK alone, there are more than 40,000 choirs and 2.14 million people sing regularly.
Led by public health infectious diseases specialist Professor Jackie Cassell from Brighton and Sussex Medical School, the team behind the new study is calling for the original claims to be re-examined.
“Ethically we think the original outbreak investigation should not [have] mentioned an index case,” says Brunel University London’s Dr Colin Axon.
“That’s because everybody in that choir would know who the first person was. So mentioning it puts that person at risk, effectively saying they’re responsible for the death of their friends. That’s a massive and unacceptable moral burden.”
TV choirmaster Gareth Malone, from BAFTA-winning reality series The Choir, said: “The outbreak in the Skagit Valley Chorale sent shockwaves round the singing world.
“I’m sure singers everywhere will welcome the fact that this is being looked at again. Singing with others is so good for us in so many ways, but some people are still fearful about singing because of Covid, so it’s important that we are constantly re-evaluating the evidence.
“The Skagit County story is a good example of a familiar problem, where an early provisional study gets taken for granted and cited without critical re-evaluation,” says Professor Robert Dingwall of Nottingham Trent University.
“There are likely to be many similar cases out there and the scientific community needs to find better ways of detecting them if policy mistakes are to be avoided.”
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