PROVO, Utah (AP) – An outbreak of COVID-19 has been reported at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ main missionary training center in Provo, Utah, officials from the church.
The Provo Missionary Training Center, which resumed in-person training in June, requires all missionaries to be fully immunized and is also performing COVID-19 testing.
Face coverings will now be required in all interior spaces and missionaries will not attend their assigned missions unless they have tested negative for COVID-19 or completed the necessary quarantine periods, a said church spokesperson Sam Penrod.
Newly arriving missionaries will have to take a negative COVID-19 test when they report to the center, he said.
After several missionaries tested positive this week, all 588 missionaries in the Provo center were tested and a total of 91 tested positive. Very few of those who tested positive reported feeling sick or having symptoms, he said.
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The center is still operating at reduced capacity and has enough space to separate those who have tested negative from those who have tested positive for the respiratory virus.
PHOTOS: Latter-day Saint missionaries
Missionaries
Elders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints send a missionary to the Idaho Falls regional airport on May 27.
John Roark, Post Register
Missionaries
Elders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints send a missionary to the Idaho Falls regional airport on May 27.
John Roark, Post Register
Missionaries
Sister Makenna Jones poses for a photo at the Idaho Falls Temple on May 28. Jones, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has been reassigned from her mission in Peru to serve in Idaho Falls due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
John Roark, Post Register
Center-South Community Action Partnership
Elder Sterling Jenkins, left, and Elder Cody Shiess prepared boxes of food Thursday at the South Central Community Action Partnership in Twin Falls. Missionaries help out at the center twice a week.
DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS
Pandemic accelerates transition of Mormon missionaries online
In this May 27, 2020 photo, Shaelee Palmer, 20, right, a missionary from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, says goodbye to her mother Amber at the Salt Lake City International Airport before to go on a mission to North Carolina. .
AP Photo / Rick Bowmer
Pandemic accelerates transition of Mormon missionaries online
In this May 27, a photo of Seth Rather, a missionary from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, looks at his smartphone in his apartment in Brigham City, Utah.
AP Photo / Rick Bowmer
Mormon Missionary Virus Outbreak
Missionaries returning from the Philippines leave Salt Lake City International Airport.
Rick Egan, The Salt Lake Tribune
Mormon Missionary Virus Outbreak
The Preston family applauded March 22 when they saw Elder Kaleb Preston returning from his mission with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Philippines at the Salt Lake City International Airport.
Rick Egan, Salt Lake Tribune
Dress pants for Mormon women
In this 2013 photo, missionary sisters are evacuated from Temple Square in Salt Lake City, to be checked by emergency personnel, after a gas leak is detected in the South Visitors Center.
Rick Egan / The Salt Lake Tribune via AP
Online mission calls
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is launching an initiative in which candidate missionaries receive their missions online rather than by mail. In Fruit Heights, Utah, 17-year-old Billy Elliott recently received his Peru Chiclayo mission call.
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Mormon Church Sexual Assault
This July 26, 2017, a photo shows the exterior of a new Missionary Training Center building during the media tour through a window of one of the MTC buildings in Provo, Utah.
Sammy Jo Hester / The Daily Herald via AP
Magic Valley Regional Airport Renovation at Joslin Field
Missionaries prepare to go through a security checkpoint Friday March 11, 2016 at the Magic Valley Regional Airport near Twin Falls.
DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS
Refugees
Downtown service missionaries Garth and Sherrie Van Roosendaal answer questions from Bhutanese refugees Sayal and her mother, Lalo, at the Nepalese branch of Crossroads Square in the Salt Lake South Stake.
(PHOTO COURTESY OF LDS CHURCH)
Missionaries
Elder Tiboah Ofe, left, an LDS missionary from Ghana, and Elder Trevor Ady use maps to illustrate the different levels of heaven in the Mormon religion with members of the Laub family on Thursday March 21, 2013 in Jerome.
TIMES-NEWS FILE
LDS Conference
Missionary sisters from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints smile as they walk through Temple Square on April 5, 2014 during conference weekend.
(COURTESY PHOTO)
