The Georgian Orthodox church has largely refused to heed the pleas of public health officials, who have urged people to stay home – CNN reports.

Churches across Georgia have remained open and continued to hold ceremonies, a move that experts say could prove disastrous.

This past Sunday, thousands gathered in churches across the country to mark Palm Sunday on the Orthodox calendar. The services were an explicit breach of the lockdown decreed by authorities on March 30, which included a ban on gatherings of more than three people.

The tradition-bound church has so far refused to adapt communion rites to counter epidemiological concerns. Worshippers line up at the end of each service to receive the sacrament of communion from the same communal spoon, Reuters reported Thursday.

“The spoon is often not even washed” between uses, Salome Kandelaki, a project coordinator at the Georgian Institute of Politics who researches religion in Georgia, told CNN.

A spokesperson for the Georgian Orthodox Church did not return a request for comment. But church officials have been insistent that its traditional practices do no harm.

“It is not possible for this virus to be spread by the church,” Metropolitan Gerasim, a senior priest who heads a large district in western Georgia, was quoted as saying by Georgian media this week. “We are healing people, not hurting them.”