Summer camps hit with COVID outbreaks
The U.S. has seen a string of COVID-19 outbreaks tied to summer camps in recent weeks in places such as Texas, Illinois, Florida, Missouri and Kansas, in what some fear could be a preview of the upcoming school year.
In some cases the outbreaks have spread from the camp to the broader community.
The clusters have come as the number of newly confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the U.S. has reversed course, surging more than 60% over the past two weeks from an average of about 12,000 a day to around 19,500, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
The rise in many places has been blamed on too many unvaccinated people and the highly contagious delta variant.
Gwen Ford, a 43-year-old science teacher from Adrian, Missouri, was cautiously optimistic when she eyed the dropping case numbers in the spring and signed up her 12-yearold daughter for the West Central Christian Service Camp.
But one day after the girl got home from a week of playing in the pool, worshipping with friends and bunking in a dormitory, Ford got an email about an outbreak and then learned that her daughter’s camp buddy was infected.
“It was very nerve-wracking. It kind of seems like we finally felt comfortable and it happened,” Ford said, adding that her daughter ultimately tested negative.
Ford said she definitely plans to get her daughter vaccinated but hadn’t done so because there wasn’t much time between the start of camp and the government’s authorization of the Pfizer vaccine for 12- to 15-year-olds in May.
A note posted on the camp’s Facebook page showed that the camp nurse and several other staff members and volunteers were among those infected. Staff members at the camp did not return a call for comment.
JoAnn Martin, administrator of the public health agency in surrounding Pettis County, lamented the difficulty in getting people to take the virus seriously and get vaccinated.
“It has been a challenge since the first case,” she said. “You have people who still say it is not real. You have people who say it is a cold. You have people who say what is the big deal. You have people who say it is all a government plot.”
In the Houston area, health officials reported more than 130 youths and adults tested positive for the virus in cases connected to a church camp. The pastor of Clear Creek Community Church in League City said the outbreak happened in two waves, first at the camp and then when people returned home in late June.
“In some cases, entire families are sick,” pastor Bruce Wesley said on the church’s Facebook page.
In Illinois, health officials said 85 teens and adults at a Christian youth camp in midJune tested positive, including an unvaccinated young adult who was hospitalized, and some people from the camp attended a nearby conference, leading to 11 additional cases.
The Illinois Department of Public Health said all the campers were eligible for the vaccine, but only “a handful” of campers and staff had received it.