A California pastor has died from COVID-19, five weeks after his megachurch reopened in defiance of the state’s ban on indoor religious services. Bob Bryant, a 58-year-old associate pastor at the Water of Life Community Church in San Bernardino County, contracted the virus in November and eventually suffered severe pneumonia in his lungs, the Los Angeles Times reports. San Bernardino is one of the hardest hit regions in a state struggling to contain a vicious winter wave of the virus. But the church nevertheless ignored a mid-July order banning indoor church services. Church officials insisted to the Times that Byrant didn’t come to church after he developed symptoms but they weren’t sure when the pastor was last in the church.
