The deadly outbreak among members of a choir has stunned health officials, who have concluded that the virus was almost certainly transmitted through the air from one or more people without symptoms.
With the coronavirus quickly spreading in Washington state in early March, leaders of the Skagit Valley Chorale debated whether to go ahead with weekly rehearsal.But Skagit County hadn’t reported any cases, schools and business remained open, and prohibitions on large gatherings had yet to be announced.
“That’s all we can think of right now,” said Polly Dubbel, a county communicable disease and environmental health manager. One of the authors of that study, Jamie Lloyd-Smith, a UCLA infectious disease researcher, said it’s possible that the forceful breathing action of singing dispersed viral particles in the church room that were widely inhaled.
Amateur singers interested in choral music tend to be older, but the group includes some young adults. Last year, Burdick worked some hip-hop into one number. Carolynn and Jim, who ran a home remodeling business together, had been singing with the choir for 15 years and thought of it as a centering force in their lives. They had introduced the Backlunds to the choir.
Comstock, a soprano, and Owen, a tenor, took their usual seats beside each other in the third row. The rows toward the front and center filled up around them.Given the anxiety over the coronavirus, the conductor decided to lead off with a piece called “Sing On.” They felt fatigued and achy. Some had fevers, coughs and shortness of breath they had heard were telltale symptoms of COVID-19. Some had nausea and diarrhea.
They asked each person with symptoms to list their close contacts during the 24 hours before illness set in. Then they called those people, telling anyone who felt sick to quarantine themselves. Three days later, he received another call. Hamilton had been rushed to the hospital soon after he had talked with her and now she was dead.
But this past Friday, the conductor got another call. She had died. And another woman, a tenor, had been rushed to the hospital.
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