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Muslims and Christians stand side by side with hands open to the sky or pressed together as they pray for coronavirus patients and healthcare workers in the South African coastal city of Cape Town.
Faith groups of all faiths and backgrounds have taken turns taking part in joint prayers outside hospitals over the past week, a spiritual manifestation of support as a second wave of infections wreak havoc across the country.
“Under normal circumstances, any leader of this community would go freely to the home of a sick or bereaved person,” said Pastor Gerhard de Vries Block of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.
“But due to the lockdown, we are no longer allowed to do this.”
Imam Sheigh Salieg Isaacs has already prayed in more than a dozen hospital entrances and parking lots.
“For now, we are only doing hospitals,” he told AFP. “But we are also planning to go to hospices and retirement homes soon.”
The initiative is a way to express solidarity with patients struggling alone with Covid-19, isolated from family and friends in plastic-wrapped hospital wards.
“We might not always have something to say, but just being there means a lot,” said de Vries Block.
The initiative is a way to express solidarity with patients struggling alone with Covid-19, isolated from family and friends in plastic-wrapped hospital wards. By RODGER BOSCH (AFP) “Frontline workers need our support,” he added. “They need our prayers as much as the sick and the bereaved.”
Isaacs said participants who know a patient or health worker personally pray outside their windows.
Each session is limited to 15 people, with face masks and imposed social distancing. Unexpected arrivals are kindly requested to stay in their car.
“We use a loud megaphone so that they can hear sound,” noted the imam. “But the main thing is the visual which can give them some hope.”
South Africa has recorded the highest rates of coronavirus on the continent, with more than 1.3 million cases and 37,000 confirmed deaths to date.
The second wave of infection began in December and is fueled by a new viral variant widely considered to be more infectious.
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