Summer camp in a time of pandemic
Operator pitches ‘ large bubble’ to protect kids
A summer camp in Haliburton cottage country is pitching the Ontario government to let it accept hundreds of child campers into a “large bubble” for the summer season. To do so, it has agreed to pay $ 150,000 for more than 1,000 COVID-19 tests.
The provincial government ordered overnight camps cancelled entirely as part of its pandemic response. The Ontario Camps Association has said it “understands and supports” the decision. Day camps have not yet been cancelled.
But some overnight camps, facing the prospect of refunding an entire year’s revenue, and dashing the summer dreams of thousands of children who will be stuck in the city, have scrambled to find a workaround.
“I believe the danger of children staying in the city is going to be unprecedented,” said Corey Mandell, owner and director of Camp Timberlane, just south of Algonquin Provincial Park. “Kids are going to social gather no matter what. It’s already started.”
His proposal, sent this week to Ontario Premier Doug Ford, follows an earlier failed pitch by a coalition of camps to open with restrictions guided by public health officials, including a prior two weeks of self- isolation, and a COVID-19 test in the week or so before attending.
Mandell said his proposal to operate with 300 campers instead of the normal 530 adds the extra measure of a quick COVID test on arrival. This new point-of-care test is not yet approved by Health Canada but is expected to be available in time for a July camp opening, according to the manufacturer. Mandell shared a letter of intent for the purchase from Precision Biomonitoring, a Guelph, Ont., company that has created a 60-minute test for the virus that causes COVID-19.
Once a makeshift lab is set up on site, Mandell said the cost would be about $100 for each test.
His proposal is to buy two of the machines, for a capacity of 20 tests an hour, so all the campers could be tested in one day, and staff in another.
Once accepted into the bubble of the camp’s lakeside property, campers and staff would not be allowed to leave and return, and would adjust activities to support social distancing. Mandell said cabins would be reduced from 16 campers to 8 or 10, with two bathrooms, and would not interact with other cabins.
Dining would be distanced and often outdoors, with campers served at a “no touch buffet,” and cleaning stepped up. After two weeks, he said, some of those rules could be relaxed, as the incubation period would have passed.
The proposal could involve sponsoring tests for a second camp that serves disadvantaged children, Mandell said.
In his pitch to the government, Mandell said parents “recognize that, from a public health perspective, attending overnight camps with these measures in place is a safer option for their children than day camp, school or even public parks.”
There is no indication the province intends to allow this. Mandell has also suggested an exit test, and the possibility of a concluding period of self- isolation. All told, it is a high price for camp, even if parents can afford the basic fees of more than $1,000 a week.
But the proposal also raises the trickier political question of why, in a time of emergency social solidarity, the ability to pay for expensive private COVID-19 testing should determine who is allowed to have a normal summer of swimming and canoeing. If every Ontario child is making sacrifices, why should rich kids be the first to catch a break?
“We shouldn’t be. That’s the truth,” said Mandell. “The fact that the province has opened up testing ( to those who suspect they have had contact) alone should be enough, along with the 14day quarantine, for camps to operate.”
On this view, his proposal is extra safe. “I’ve mitigated the risk down to nothing, or almost nothing, by the screening,” he said.
Mandell has been advised in this effort to change the government’s mind by Samantha Nutt, a Toronto physician and community medicine expert who has directed support for children in emergency situations around the world as founder of War Child Canada.
She also used to work in the emergency room in Haliburton, Ont., where sick and injured campers end up, with the normal array of appendicitis, broken arms, nails in feet from old docks, fish hooks in skin, fevers, strep throat, gastroenteritis. Her view is that the COVID-19 risk can be managed by Camp Timberlane’s proposal, and should be.
“It’s certainly a good idea, if there’s the means to test people before they arrive at camp,” she said, saying the cancellation was premature. “I believe in the importance of kids getting to camp.”
Not all camps will be able to make such drastic adjustments but ,“the point is to sit down across the table with public health and see if you can’t reach an agreement that everyone is comfortable with,” Nutt said.
All available science and evidence “shows that kids are poor vectors of this particular virus.”
“There isn’t a no-risk scenario,” she said.
“Not even keeping your child home.”
Nutt is married to Eric Hoskins, a former Liberal Ontario Minister of Health, who has not participated in her volunteer advocacy on behalf of summer camps. Their 15- year- old son went to Camp Timberlane last year.
“We need to start to put a foot forward,” Nutt said. “We need to find mechanisms to make things work safely for children.”