LANCASTER, Pa. (AP) —
Late last spring a COVID-19 wave tore through the Plain community when they resumed church services, infecting an untold number of Amish and Mennonites in Lancaster County.
The administrator of a medical center in the heart of the Amish community in New Holland Borough estimates as many as 90% of Plain families have since had at least one family member infected, and that this religious enclave achieved what no other community in the United States has: herd immunity.
“So, you would think if COVID was as contagious as they say, it would go through like a tsunami; and it did,” said Allen Hoover, an Old Order Mennonite and administrator of the Parochial Medical Center, a clinic that primarily serves the Plain community.