To catch any coronavirus cases tied to Mendocino County church service, county offers free testing

Mendocino County officials hope anyone who may have had contact with a husband-wife worship team at Redwood Valley Assembly of God or with a second man who joined them at the church as they streamed a Mother’s Day service - all three have since come down with COVID-19 - will come in for free testing Tuesday at Eagle Peak Middle School in Redwood Valley.

The diagnostic testing will be offered from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. to try to stem any cross-county coronavirus outbreak among those who may have been exposed to the three people within the past 14 days or to their known contacts, officials said.

“It is our duty to protect the public’s health,” said Carmel Angelo, chief executive officer of Mendocino County, where streamed church services with up to a dozen people physically present are allowed under the current health order.

In this case, Angelo said, urging people to be tested “is the best way we can do that.”

Angelo didn’t know how many people were present at the Mother’s Day church service. But Lake County resident Sharon McMilin, whose husband Jack, is church pastor, said she believes the situation has been blown out of proportion.

Though she and her husband both contracted the illness and her husband has been hospitalized, she said she remembers only one other person being present during the Mother’s Day service live-streamed by the couple on May 10, when county health officials believe the virus was transmitted to the other man, an elderly Ukiah Valley resident.

She said the man was “way in the back” of the church, counting church donations and readying a bank deposit. She said she wasn’t aware he had become ill until Monday.

McMilin wasn’t sure, but said another person also may have come for the service, an account that appears to match with a Facebook live recording in which Jack McMilin instructed someone about a piece of equipment over a microphone.

But under the county health order, up to 12 individuals may participate in a worship service live-streamed to others remotely, as long as they engage in recommended preventive hygiene and social distancing measures intended to prevent coronavirus transmission.

That includes, when singing is involved, safeguards such as extra ventilation, distancing of greater than 6 feet, ensuring singers are not face-to-face and even use of plexiglass screening between singers because of the potential for airborne droplets.

A video of the May 10 service shows both McMilins up on stage, spaced widely apart, singing during the opening, before Jack McMilin begins preaching. Sharon McMilin did not remember having sung and also said the two wore masks when they weren’t singing, though those were not visible on the Facebook recording.

She said none of their other 30 or so parishioners were present.

“Once they put the shelter-in-place, we never had another service,” she said. “We just had Facebook live. That was it.”

And when they were at the church, they distanced, used hand sanitizer and used Lysol on door handles and surfaces before leaving.

“That’s why I’m saying the story is getting blown way out of proportion,” she said.

The situation came to the attention of health officials after the third attendee, who has not been publicly identified, became ill and got tested for coronavirus. His case, the 14th in Mendocino County, was reported to the county on Friday. Contact tracers determined he had been in close contact with the McMilins at the church service and while working at a church food bank around the same time, though no one came to collect food that day, Angelo said.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, the McMilins, who had become ill, went to be screened for coronavirus, resulting in positive tests, Sharon McMilin said.

Jack McMilin, who has underlying health conditions, was hospitalized at Adventist Health Ukiah Valley, Mendocino County health officials said. On Facebook, his wife told parishioners he had pneumonia.

She and the Ukiah man are recovering at their homes, health officials said.

Angelo said many churches in the county, as elsewhere around the country, have bristled under orders to close their doors in response to the coronavirus pandemic. In some states, church leaders have openly defied orders to keep houses of worship shuttered.

She said the safest way to handle the situation with the Assembly of God Redwood Valley is to provide testing for those who may need it.

“We don’t know if anybody - it might be zero, it may be 20, it might be 50 - has encountered this church or one of these three people in the last 14 days,” Angelo said. “Worst case, we test people who were never exposed. Best case scenario, if there’s anyone out there who was exposed to people in this church, then we catch them now.”

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com.