Your organisation will have its own unique set of conditions—group size, geographical location, rehearsal venue characteristics and member demographic, including their individual underlying health conditions— that you will need to identify and take into account when developing a plan to manage rehearsals into the future.
At present there is no risk-free situation—you will need make decisions about the level of risk you and your members are comfortable with. For example, age may be a factor in deciding on some of the control measures.
Think also about the particular makeup of your group and how they might adapt or react to what you are proposing. What might be acceptable to people with low-risk health profiles might cause anxiety in others. Appendix Two outlines some specific demographic profiles.
You may decide that risk of transmission is not the only risk to contend with. Many choirs are specifically brought together for the benefit of the singers mental health and the mutual support that singing together provides in difficult times. You may decide to place significant weight on this aspect in assessing your priorities.
We have outlined the potential hazards and identified measures you could take, but you will need to apply them to your own choir setting by:
- identifying people with vulnerabilities to COVID-19 (see Appendix 2)
- determining the severity of the hazard
- determining the likelihood of the hazard occurring