Vaccination news continued apace. From the Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles temporarily shutting down following protests to Tanzania’s president saying “vaccines don’t work” to ultra-Orthodox communities continuing to defy coronavirus rules in Israel, examples of vaccine resistance made many headlines. While religion is not necessarily a primary factor in these cases of resistance, each example shows how religious beliefs can become intricately intertwined with other social, political, economic, and cultural factors. In the LA case, one protestor held a sign reading “Save your soul. Turn back now,” while others at the protest held more politically-motivated and anti-vaccine signs. 
 
Demonstrating the complexity of understanding vaccine resistance, religious belief is in complicated relationships with other beliefs, values, mistrusts, and misinformation. In Tanzania, President John Magufuli has made clear that at least part of his motivation for refusing COVID vaccines is religious, stating “I do not expect to announce a lockdown even for one day because our God is living, and he will continue to protect Tanzanians.” His vaccine resistance is also based on a mistrust of Western medicine. He opined, “If the white man was able to come up with vaccinations, then vaccines for AIDS would have been brought. Vaccines for tuberculosis would have made it a thing of the past. Vaccines for malaria would have been found. Vaccines for cancer would have been found.” In Israel, religious factors are also intertwined with the political and social. COVID restrictions and lockdowns have exacerbated tensions between different sects of Judaism that predate the pandemic, and many wonder what it will mean for the future. 

This comes even as other countries, such as South Sudan, are increasing lockdown restrictions, including pausing all religious events. Restrictions on religious gatherings was one of the first news angles to break regarding religion in the pandemic, and it continues to be a point of interest and debate. For example, in South Africa, Freedom of Religion South Africa (FOR SA) went to court to challenge restrictions on religious gatherings, even though restrictions were recently loosened to allow 50 people at indoor venues and 100 at outdoor venues. As vaccine resistance is also complex, so is the implementation of restrictions on religious gatherings. In the United Kingdom, community insiders were the ones to highlight the lack of compliance among some Haredi Jewish communities in London, particularly around weddings. The story paints a picture of some religious leaders and community members trying to enforce the rules, but with large-scale weddings and school attendance still taking place. An open access article in the journal Laws discusses religious liberty legal cases around COVID-19 during the Trump administration. It is part of a special issue on "The Crisis of Religious Freedom in the Age of COVID-19 Pandemic," which goes into more detail on religious liberty lawsuits around restrictions on religious practice during the pandemic.

Meanwhile, reports continue of the loss of religious and lay leaders during the pandemic, this time with the “numbing” loss of nine retired Dominican sisters in Michigan, among others around the world.