By Jennifer Wolff
Read my interview with top camp doc Laura Blaisdell, MD in my new Campenings newsletter at https://campenings.substack.com/p/how-camps-can-manage-the-summer-2021?r=b7q81&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy
And please subscribe as you can see that I am clearly having difficulty integrating WordPress with Substack!
By Andy Rosen Globe Staff,Updated February 25, 2021
Massachusetts camp operators, parents, and children hoping for a fresh-air respite this summer got a long-awaited bit of good news on Thursday, as Governor Charlie Baker announced that both overnight and day camp programs will be allowed to open this year.
The news, part of a broader reopening plan laid out by the administration, follows a year of uncertainty for camps across the state. Overnight programs were not allowed to operate in 2020, and many day programs were significantly curtailed to comply with regulations put in place to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now, with signs that the crisis is easing, and a year of industry experience operating elsewhere under increased public health restrictions, camp operators welcomed Baker’s announcement.
“Confidence has now been bolstered for resident camps to be able to effectively register their families, to plan for summer operations, to make the decisions necessary and the investments necessary to reopen their doors for the summer,” said Matt Scholl of the Becket-Chimney Corners YMCA camps, and president of the Massachusetts Camping Association.Get Business Headlines in your inboxThe Globe’s latest business headlines delivered every morning, Monday through Friday.Enter EmailSign Up
Camp operators and families had been growing increasingly impatient as the season drew nearer without a clear answer on what kinds of programs would be able to operate.
Scholl said the information released Thursday helps with planning, but camps still need more details about what the state public health protocols will be — and soon.
Such decisions will determine how many campers each program can accept, what supplies and equipment camps need to gather for safety, and how many staffers they will require.
The state public health department did not immediately respond to a request for information about the regulations.
State Senator Adam G. Hinds, a Pittsfield Democrat whose district includes many of the state’s camps, said operators have told him that they ideally would like to know what will be required of them by the beginning of March, which is Monday.
The registration season for summer programs would normally be well underway. Overnight camps, in particular, are concerned about permanently losing families to camps in nearby states that were allowed to open last year.
“Camps have always said that once they have the green light to go ahead, and clear guidance on what is required to achieve that green light, then they will be able to meet that,” Hinds said. “The important step is having that clarity, and having that on-ramp, so that when people are making decisions about the summer — which is now — they are able to understand where they can send their children.”
By Bernadette Hogan and Natalie Musumeci
February 17, 2021 |
New York’s outdoor amusement parks that were shuttered as a result of the coronavirus pandemic can reopen at limited capacity in April — and summer camps across the Empire State should “plan on reopening” in June, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Wednesday.
Outdoor amusement parks can reopen on April 9 at 33 percent capacity, with COVID-19 safety protocols in place like mask-wearing and social distancing, the governor announced on a conference call with reporters.
“Rides or attractions that cannot be socially distanced must remain closed,” Cuomo explained.
“Indoor family entertainment centers” can also reopen beginning March 26 at 25 percent capacity, Cuomo said — though it wasn’t immediately clear what falls under that umbrella.
Cuomo did not give an exact date for when New York’s overnight summer camps can reopen from their coronavirus-induced closures, beyond that they can plan on reopening in June.
“We hope the current trajectory [of coronavirus positivity rates] stays until June,” said Cuomo.
Summer camps must have coronavirus testing protocols in place to reopen, he said.
New York state’s COVID-19 positivity rate has been trending down, with the latest positive testing rate for the bug at 3.58 percent, data shows.
The statewide COVID-19 infection rate on a seven-day rolling average has declined for 40 straight days, with the latest rate at 3.6 percent, Cuomo said, noting that it’s the lowest for the seven-day average since Nov. 28.
In the last 24 hours, 109 New Yorkers died as a result of the coronavirus, “even with all that progress,” said Cuomo.
The rate of total hospitalizations for COVID-19 dropped by 46, bringing the statewide total to 6,574, according to state data.
CAMPENINGS IS BACK! PLEASE SEND ALL YOUR CAMP NEWS TO CAMPENINGS@GMAIL.COM, ALONG WITH ANY QUESTIONS OR CONCERNS YOU HAVE ABOUT CAMP THIS SUMMER. COMING SOON: THE CAMPENINGS NEWSLETTER.
By Lena H. Sun
As school and public health officials look for ways to reopen classrooms safely throughout the country, a potential road map emerges from the experience of four sleep-away camps and the extensive measures they adopted to prevent spread of the novel coronavirus among more than 1,000 campers and staff members.
Their experience, described in a federal study published Wednesday, shows the measures necessary to keep the virus at bay. The four camps in Maine conducted virus testing before and after campers arrived and made them quarantine. Campers and counselors were kept in the same groups while at the camp. Face masks and physical distancing were employed, extensive cleaning and disinfection were frequent, and activities were conducted outdoors as much as possible, according to the study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Maine camps’ experience contrasts with that of a Georgia sleep-away camp where 260 children and staff members — three-quarters of the 344 tested — contracted the virus less than a week after spending time together in close quarters. A CDC study of the Georgia camp found that asymptomatic infection was common and potentially contributed to undetected transmission.AD
Jeffrey Vergales, a pediatrician and senior author of the Maine study, said the key to limiting spread of the coronavirus and covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, at the four camps was keeping the 1,022 campers and staff members in separate bubbles, or cohorts, for the entire time.
That way, “if we had a case, we wouldn’t have to scramble to identify the contacts. We knew who they were, and we could very quickly quarantine those contacts,” said Vergales, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Virginia. He added: “The fact that we had no known secondary spread is luck. The fact that we didn’t have an exponential outbreak is planning.”
Vergales and the other researchers said their findings have implications for the successful implementation of covid-19 mitigation strategies in other overnight camps and in residential schools and colleges. But they and other experts acknowledge that the extensive measures taken by the camps may not be as feasible in K-12 schools, where it’s harder to limit student interaction with the community.
Schools and universities that are reopening for in-person classes, or a hybrid approach of in-person and virtual learning, have reported rapidly rising coronavirus cases among students. Some universitieshave abandoned plans to hold in-person classes amid outbreaks in the first weeks of class.AD
“As schools reopen, I think it’s really useful to have data or case reports from places that have successfully reopened high-risk settings or activities, so I’m glad for this report,” said Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “It sounds like they effectively created a bubble through a combination of serial testing and limiting outside contacts. We’ve seen other examples of the bubble approach being successful, and this is further evidence of that.”
It will be difficult to get the same results in a K-12 school, she said. Students and families remain part of the larger community, “so they won’t be able to effectively create a bubble,” Rivers said in an email. Physical distancing, mask-wearing, hand-washing and keeping students in the same groups can reduce transmission, and repeated testing can reduce risk, too, she said. “But it won’t be possible to completely wall off new introductions of the virus like the camps were able to do.”
The Maine camp sessions ranged from 44 to 62 days from mid-June to mid-August. The camps are not identified for privacy reasons, Vergales said.AD
Campers had to quarantine with their families for 10 to 14 days before arriving. About five to seven days before arrival, all but a dozen campers and staff members were tested for the coronavirus. (Those 12 attendees had been diagnosed with coronavirus two months before the start of camp and had completed isolation before arrival.)
Before the start of camp, four attendees tested positive and isolated at home for 10 days. They arrived at camp, remained asymptomatic and did not receive further testing for the duration of camp, according to the report.
After arrival, campers were quarantined in their groups for 14 days, regardless of test results. The groups — ranging from five to 44 people — were formed using bunk assignments or age. Campers and staff members were screened at least once a day for fever and covid-19-associated symptoms.AD
Daily symptom checks identified one staff member and 11 campers with potential signs of covid-19. They were immediately isolated and tested. Members of their group were quarantined until all 12 tested negative.
An additional three asymptomatic attendees — two staff members and one camper — tested positive after arrival and were isolated for 10 days and their group members were quarantined for 14 days. After additional testing returned no positive results, everyone was released from quarantine. No secondary spread was identified, the report said.
The CDC said in a statement that the study “reinforces how powerful everyday preventive actions are in reducing and keeping COVID-19 transmission low. … Using a combination of proven public health strategies to slow the spread of COVID-19, campers and staff were able to enjoy a traditional summer pastime amid a global pandemic.”AD
Because campers stayed in their own bubbles, there was little need for masks unless the groups engaged in activities with other groups or were indoors, Vergales said. Staffers had to wear masks when food was being served.
Vergales, who was a volunteer at the two camps attended by his son and daughter, said he and camp leaders spent March, April and May “literally walking through every camp for every activity where there was risk and then figured out how to minimize risk.”
Instead of serving meals to all campers at the same time, meals were staggered and each group of campers was called and dismissed at set times. Instead of family-style meals, buffet lines were set up where counselors served food to avoid campers getting near each other.
PORTLAND (WGME) – Out of all the overnight summer camps that opened up in Maine, there was not a single case of COVID-19.
“From as west as California, we have a large group from Florida,” Camp Wigwam Owner and Director Bob Strauss said.
Camp wigwam held a six-week session with 140 campers. Anyone on site was tested.
“That was our goal was to create a bubble within camp, nobody in and nobody out once we established that,” Strauss said. “No out of camp trips. No camp competition.”
Activities looked much different this year.
“They spent a lot of time as a group in the beginning, which we think brought them together closer than ever before and it’s something we’re talking about doing more of in the future,” Camp Wigwam Assistant Director Cameron McAllister said.
At Camp Winona in Bridgton, instead of testing staff and campers, they quarantined when arriving to camp and worked in “pods.”
“If we did have a positive or presumptive positive case, we were going to isolate that person and care for them while making sure that we were contact tracing,” Winona Camp for Boys Owner and Co-director Laura Ordway said.
As far as what schools can learn from camps, Ordway says it’s important to be willing to adapt, but also stick to the plan.
“Rather than feeling like a burden, they were really helpful guidelines, they didn’t say you must, everything said you should consider,” Ordway said.
Directors say it was a summer they’ll never forget.
“We gained knowledge out of the season, we gained knowledge from our procedures and our policies, and if we need to do it this way again next year, we’re confident we can,” Strauss said.
Coronavirus has closed some camps for good. It’s made it harder for the rest of them to survive.
BY MORGAN LEE
2020 has been a year unlike any other for Christian summer camps. Here’s how CT captured the situation in a recent report:
Like most businesses and ministries across the country, Christian camps felt the economic halt right away. Church retreats and events were called off in March, April, and May due to bans on mass gatherings across the states. Before long, camps were forced to grapple with the unimaginable: no summer camp.
By May’s end, more than 100 Christian camps had announced cancellations. Most of the rest made dramatic changes to summer programming. Summer camp can represent half of a camp’s annual revenue or more, so skipping it for a year comes as a massive financial blow.
Many Christian camps did cancel their summers. Some canceled and then reversed course. Some held programming all summer.
This has been a very difficult summer. We’ve got camps that have been open continuously, even through WWI and WWII, closed down for the first time this summer,” said Jacob Sorenson, the director of Sacred Playgrounds, a ministry offering research and training to camps and congregations. “It’s been a very difficult time for the industry as a whole, including secular camps.”
One added challenge for Christian summer camps has been politics.
“Christian camps are again caught in this political environment where the ones that have a constituency that tends to be conservative have been under a lot of pressure to open up,” said Sorenson, who researches camping ministry and who contributed to the previously mentioned CT article. “While the ones that have a constituency that tends to be more progressive or Democratic-leaning have been under pressure to close down. And it’s made it very difficult for camp directors to make a good decision for the health of their camp communities.”
Dr. Aaron Glatt, a Woodmere resident who is the chair of the Department of Medicine at Mount Sinai South Nassau in Oceanside, issued a letter to the Five Towns communities noting that the Nassau County health commissioner called him and asked for his help concerning eight cases of “newly diagnosed Covid-19” in the Five Towns from “campers returning from Camp Shoresh in Pennsylvania.”
Glatt also wrote: “In addition, many other campers there had symptoms and were not tested for Covid-19. The PA DOH [Department of Health] is already involved as well.”
He stated that because of “significant concerns” that New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the state’s DOH have regarding exposure, Glatt said that all campers returning from that camp should self-quarantine immediately. All family members exposed to those children should also quarantine, he said.
“The governor himself is aware and has expressed great concern about this exposure and the potential this might have regarding delaying school openings,” Glatt wrote, adding that everything possible should be done to avert an outbreak, and the campers or their family members should be attending shul or any other community events.
Michael Leon, who lives in Woodmere where the largest initial outbreak of Cobid-19 took place in the Five Towns posted on Facebook. “This is outrageous. Camp Shoresh apparently knew campers were displaying symptoms and did not have the courtesy to have them tested.” Leon went on to write that, “unfortunately some people in this community just do not take this issue seriously enough.”
On Camp Shoresh’s website there is a six-page listing of its Covid-19 protocols. According to its mission it is, “a camp for teenage boys, focused on helping mold well rounded Bnei-Torah and athletes.” The goal, camp officials stated on the site is to teach the fundamentals of several sports through daily clinics, leagues, and intercamps with role models and teachers. The camp aims to combine Torah, sports and fun trips and activities designed to ensure an “incredible summer experience” for the campers.
As of press time calls to the camp for comment were not returned.
When I tweeted about the closure of my kids’ day camp in suburban Dallas in mid-July, I had hoped that a few people would see it and think about what our lives will look like if schools attempt to open this fall. I hadn’t expected almost 80,000 likes and countless retweets. But the story struck a chord. Because it’s exactly what every parent across this country is worried about.
In late June, after having our kids home for almost four months and moving across the country amidst a global pandemic, we decided to put our two young children in day camp. They were to be out Monday-Friday from 9:00am – 3:45pm.
Though we had watched numbers rise rapidly in neighboring Dallas County, in our area, Collin County, the cases, and certainly the death numbers, have been far lower and the camp was situated even father away. The camp put numerous safety precautions in place, too, including mask wearing, daily temperature checks, social distancing of age groups, no food or material sharing, the list went on and on.
They sounded like the same precautions our schools have been emailing us about. So, we made the choice. We prepared our kids by socially isolating and practicing mask wearing at home. Then we sent them to camp.
Less than two weeks in, a child at the camp was sent home sick with a fever and a headache and tested positive for COVID-19. Within the next few days, other children and counselors tested positive as well. The camp immediately shut down.
The whole situation really shook us up.
My husband and I are scared for our children and have been monitoring them and ourselves. But we also have no idea what we’re going to do about school this fall.
For the first time, we’re taking in earnest about the idea of entirely homeschooling our 6-year-old and 3-year-old. We both have jobs, so we don’t know if that’s even feasible. But we’re so worried about the safety of our children and ourselves, we have to consider it.
After I tweeted about my experience, I received hundreds of replies and direct messages from people worried about exactly the scenario I described. Several told me that they’ve decided not to send their kids out, even when they could, because of the fear of an outbreak. Others noted that they send their kids to camp or day care but are afraid every day. Still, others DMed to tell me that they were on the fence about the issue and that my tweet helped them decide.
But some people didn’t seem to value the difficult choice many parents have to make.
Several comments expressed disbelief that we even considered sending our kids out. Others claimed that because kids like ours were out now, that’s why schools will have difficulties in the fall.
I think those claims are incredibly inaccurate and frankly, very unfair.
Many of us who’ve watched the case numbers rise across the country understand that there are risks to being in public places.
But for parents, the decision as to whether to send our children to a camp, daycare, or soon, a school, is a complicated one.
We’re falling terribly behind at our jobs during a period of economic uncertainty. Our kids are off and our own mental health is frayed from turning our home into an isolation ward. Everything has been turned upside down.
We make decisions all the time about degrees of comfort and safety for our kids. And for most of us, there are clear pathways to these decisions. Data, stories, our gut. We trust a variety of things to help us determine what’s best for our kids. But there’s no playbook here. We’re all lost and confused and our kids are struggling, as well.
I know that for us, this was a wake-up call. We know so little about what this virus is or does, especially to children. But we now know exactly how we feel now and we’re making decisions based on that.
Camp was a test-run for school. And to us, that attempt failed. And the camp staff tried everything, did everything right.
When will we feel comfortable sending them to school? Like everything else in this pandemic-state, I can’t say for certain. But for now, we’re working off of the data we do have — our own lived-experience — and we can’t imagine sending our kids to school this fall. We couldn’t have known until we tried, but we are now certain that we feel most safe with our children home.
Many of the camp organizers National Geographic interviewed said that they had no known cases of COVID-19, yet not all child-care facilities have made it through the summer unscathed.
GEORGIA ZENGERLE WAS on her way. The nine-year-old’s dad wound their car through the hazy green mountains of western North Carolina in mid-July, driving four hours toward the town of Brevard—and the hope for some semblance of normalcy.
Their destination was the all-girls Keystone Camp, a 104-year-old sleep-away establishment that stayed open during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic—and decided to brave COVID-19 this summer. In a normal year, campers ride horses around the 120-acre grounds, canoe along the Green or Tuckasegee rivers, or zipline through the pine trees of the Blue Ridge Mountains. But this summer, camp came with pandemic precautions.
Georgia wore a mask most times when she was outside of her cabin, and she participated in all her activities with a small, tight-knit “household,” or social bubble. Campfires involved several traffic cones strategically spaced across the main lawn to mark socially distanced seating. When Georgia returned home on July 24, she brought back happy memories—and no COVID-19.
“She understood the reasoning [for the changes], and she understood that this was sort of a special experience: not any less fun, but different,” says Claire Farel, Georgia’s mother and an infectious-diseases physician at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Even through the worst of COVID-19, a portion of summer camps are trying to navigate the pandemic safely. Tom Rosenberg, the president and CEO of the American Camp Association, says that among the more than 15,000 camps in the U.S., 80 percent of overnight camps and 40 percent of day camps have shuttered this summer, and the industry faces a revenue loss of $16 billion.
To limit risks to children and staff, the camps that opened have reimagined how they operate, according to those interviewed by National Geographic. Many have created protocols to isolate cases before they spark outbreaks. Some have even managed to keep out COVID-19 for weeks at a time.
Other camps have not been as lucky, according to a report published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on July 31. It says that 44 percent of people at an unnamed overnight camp in the state of Georgia—260 of the 597 campers and staff—have tested positive for COVID-19. This outbreak recorded its highest attack rate in some of its youngest campers, with 51 of 100 children from ages six to 10 testing positive. The finding echoes other recent indications that even young children are at risk of COVID-19, contrary to earlier assumptions.
From head lice to strep throat, camps have always had to contend with infectious diseases. But no summer in recent memory has posed a bigger challenge than this one, according to Page Lemel, the owner and director of Keystone Camp.
Lemel has operated Keystone Camp for 37 years, and it’s been in her family for over a century. Her great-great aunt co-founded the camp in 1916 and ran it through the 1918 flu pandemic. When news of COVID-19 picked up in the spring, Lemel talked with her 89-year-old aunt about Keystone’s polio quarantines in the 1940s.
To operate during the pandemic, Lemel and her staff had to rethink everything, from how children get dropped off (parents stay in the car) to how campers gather for assembly (in masks, on the tennis court, in marked-out circles spaced far apart). Lemel has logged her temperature, and those of her staff, every day since May.
So far, the changes seem to have paid off. With two weeks left in the camp’s two-month season, no staffers or attendees have tested positive for COVID-19, and campers such as Georgia have had the freedom to play outside with friends in a way that’s been next to impossible at home since school closures and local lockdowns began earlier this year. But the daily vigilance takes its toll, especially as COVID-19 cases rise across North Carolina.
“The stress on us is the most profound I’ve ever experienced running camp,” Lemel says. “It’s petrifying to open another session, because we’re in Ground Zero.”
Laura Blaisdell shares these feelings of determination and stress. A pediatrician by training, Blaisdell moved to Maine in 2005, where her husband is the third-generation owner of Camp Winnebago, a boys’ camp in Fayette. Ever since, she’s worked each summer as the camp’s medical director.
In 2012, Blaisdell—who also has a master’s in public health—co-authored a study on how the 2009 H1N1 swine flu spread through Maine’s residential summer camps. But COVID-19 has challenged her in ways even she didn’t expect, from the elusive nature of its symptoms to the size of the national caseload.
Still, Blaisdell and others have worked around the clock to steer the camp industry through COVID-19’s choppy waters. Earlier this year, the American Camp Association and the YMCA released a 90-page “field guide” advising day and overnight camps on how to implement public health guidelines from the CDC.
Each individual cabin or class keeps its contact with the rest of the camp population to an absolute minimum. The grouping helps blunt camp-wide outbreaks by making it easier to keep any new cases isolated.
Rather than eliminate the risks of COVID-19—which can’t be done—the plan tries to lower and manage those risks. For example, the guidelines encourage parents to track their children’s symptoms, if not quarantine them outright, for the two weeks before camp. Staff are also urged to quarantine on-site for two weeks before the arrival of campers, whose temperatures and symptoms should be monitored daily.
All the standard rules apply—frequent handwashing, mask-wearing, and keeping at least six feet of distance—but medical directors such as Blaisdell have introduced a spin on social bubbles. Each individual cabin or class keeps its contact with the rest of the camp population to an absolute minimum. The grouping helps blunt camp-wide outbreaks by making it easier to keep any new cases isolated.
Such bubbling is harder for day camps, given kids, staff, and parents are coming and going regularly. But versions of it are doable. At the Children’s Theater of Charlotte in North Carolina, day campers and staff have to log their symptoms into a smartphone app every day. Cohorts of campers also stay with the same instructor throughout the duration of camp, to minimize mixing. Steven Levine, the director of production at the Children’s Theater of Charlotte, adds that they set up live-streaming of the day’s events, just in case campers fall ill or become uncomfortable with physically attending camp.
Some youth organizations have had so much success with virtual camp, they plan on making it a permanent offering. The Girl Scouts of Southern Arizona, which serves more than 5,000 girls across the state, decided in the spring to go fully online. For “Camp Log On,” scouts received a “camp-in-a-box” in the mail, filled with crafting materials, patches, and camp T-shirts. The girls logged on to Zoom and spent a few hours each day with their fellow campers. To help families without internet access more easily attend Camp Log On, the Girl Scouts of Southern Arizona extended their buildings’ WiFi networks to the parking lots. For future editions of the virtual camp, the organization also is trying to build a “lending library” of laptops.
“We had been toying with virtual for a long time, but we hadn’t really been able to fully launch something,” says Kristen Garcia-Hernandez, CEO of Girl Scouts of Southern Arizona. “It’s clear to us now that we need to keep a third lane available and have that virtual camp experience.”
While summer isn’t over yet, many camp organizers interviewed by National Geographic said they had no known cases of COVID-19, or had successfully isolated cases before the virus could spread. “I’m in the middle of the sixth inning; the game’s going well,” says Steve Baskin, owner and director of Camp Champions in Marble Falls, Texas. “I don’t want to blow it.”https://d09203c32d23630e9972ae60d5927865.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
Not all child-care facilities have made it through the summer unscathed. Brown University economist Emily Oster has been crowdsourcing a survey of daycares, summer schools, and camps—including Camp Champions and Keystone Camp—to infer the virus’s prevalence in these settings. Though Oster says the data aren’t ideal, they do suggest that many child-care centers have prevented clusters of cases from forming.
Aside from the unnamed camp in Georgia, other camps have had suspected outbreaks. Allaso Ranch, a retreat center in Hawkins, Texas, held church camp sessions in July that campers’ parents say caused between 30 and more than 80 cases of COVID-19, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and two parents interviewed by National Geographic. Grapevine, Texas’s Fellowship Church—which owns Allaso Ranch—hasn’t made any public statements on the cluster’s actual size, and the Texas Department of State Health Services doesn’t release coronavirus data on individual facilities.
Allaso Ranch had a COVID-19 plan, including daily temperature checks, but it didn’t require campers to wear masks. Pictures posted on Instagram show that at one point this July, more than 140 mask-less teenage campers were packed together at the facility for a group picture.In other images, dozens of campers are seen attending an indoor worship concert, with no apparent face masks or physical distancing.
In a statement to the Star-Telegram, a spokesperson for Fellowship Church said the church followed CDC guidelines. The spokesperson also said Allaso Ranch contacted parents if campers developed symptoms or were in close contact with potential cases. (Allaso Ranch and Fellowship Church did not respond toNational Geographic’s requests for comment.)
With the Georgia outbreak, the CDC notes that the staff didn’t require cloth face masks for campers, nor did it open windows and doors for increased ventilation. “The multiple measures adopted by the camp were not sufficient to prevent an outbreak in the context of substantial community transmission,” the report’s authors write.
Such an incident explains why medical staff at camps of all ages have been on edge. Blaisdell says that in the case of H1N1, influenza’s obvious symptoms made tracking it easy. At the Georgia camp, a quarter of the confirmed COVID-19 cases were asymptomatic. And even when symptoms do appear, the coronavirus doesn’t always manifest in kids the way it does in adults; the disease might be lurking in any stomach ache, bout of diarrhea, or case of the sniffles.
As a precaution, some camps have quarantined children for illnesses that turned out to be asthma or allergies. “Coronavirus is the great masquerader in children,” Blaisdell says. (Find out more about what we do—and don’t—know about COVID-19 and children.)
Another challenge: We still don’t understand how effectively children can spread COVID-19, though emerging research does suggest risks of transmission. For instance, one recent contact-tracing study from South Korea found that 10- to 19-year-olds spread the virus just as effectively as adults do. In another study published July 30 in JAMA Pediatrics, researchers found that children under 5 with COVID-19 had as much viral genetic material in their nasal passages as older children or adults, if not more.
By itself, this finding doesn’t necessarily mean that young children can shed large amounts of infectious virus. However, one small-scale study in Switzerland found that the amount of viral genetic material in nasal swabs correlated with the ability to isolate infectious viruses from children with symptoms of COVID-19.
“How contagious are children, [and] how likely are they to pass the virus on to other children, to teachers, or to their parents? We still don’t know the answer to that definitively,” says Dimitri Christakis, a Seattle Children’s Hospital pediatrician who co-authored a U.S. National Academies study on reopening K-12 schools amid COVID-19.
There’s also the problem of cost. Camp directors are well aware that adapting has taken resources: more staff, more cleaning supplies, more tests, more time, and more money. Not all camps, or child-care settings writ large, can bring the same resources or facilities to bear.
Safely running and attending camp during a pandemic is a privilege—one that highlights the economic and health inequities of the American summer, a gap that will only become starker as students return to school in the fall.
“Many of the inequities and disparities along racial and ethnic lines in the U.S. are perhaps even more visible now, given the context,” says Rachel Thornton, an associate professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University who co-authored a 2019 study of summertime for the National Play VideoWHEN CITIES WERE CESSPOOLS OF DISEASECities of the 19th century were breeding grounds for disease. Find out how poor living conditions played a role and how the discovery of the germ led to public health reforms still seen today.
Camps have also noticed the indirect toll that coronavirus is taking on kids. Months of isolation and social distancing have left some kids physically out of shape, Blaisdell says. Camp staff see a newfound anxiety of crowds in some campers, as well as the mental anguish the past few months have brought. “Normally, we might have one child that’s using Zoom to talk with a therapist—we’ll have a dozen this summer,” Baskin says.
Some experts are documenting these camp lessons so schools can learn from them and adopt best practices. The American Camp Association plans to do a retrospective survey of camps later this year, and Blaisdell has been collecting data on four Maine camps throughout the summer.
Christakis says that camps’s successes and failures could provide a “very useful” baseline for schools, but he and others lament the lack of a clear national strategy for monitoring COVID-19’s spread through child-care settings.
“There wasn’t the bandwidth, there wasn’t even the testing capacity, when we started … [that] should be prioritized, because we need to answer these questions,” Christakis says.
For Lemel, Keystone Camp’s director, the stakes are too high for the nation to get reopening schools wrong—a message she’s also trying to carry into local government. When Lemel isn’t at camp, she’s a commissioner in Transylvania County, North Carolina, where Keystone is located, and she chairs the state’s Association of County Commissioners’ Committee on Health and Human Services.
“Understand the energy and effort that was invested to make [camp] happen, but additionally, how incredibly important it is that we honor our children having childhoods,” she says. “Those are the lessons that we need to remember and we’ve got to make happen. We’ve just got to.”
By Beth Landman
When Camp Takajo, the famed Maine sleep-away camp, announced it wouldn’t open this summer due to Covid concerns, many parents panicked at the thought of having their children remain at home after months of lockdown. But real-estate developer Jeff Greene, who has three young sons, jumped into action. He decided to turn his 55-acre North Haven, N.Y., compound, which includes a main house and five smaller buildings, into a private outpost of the summer camp.
His first order of business was to call Takajo’s owner and arrange to hire his top staff, including the nature and wilderness counselor, arts and crafts specialist, tennis coach, and since Mr. Greene’s property sits on 3,000 feet of Sag Harbor Bay, the waterfront director.
Mr. Greene and his wife, Mei Sze, have, like most parents, enjoyed the leisure time that comes when offspring are securely tucked away at summer camp. Now, with so many camps closed, the Greenes and some other Hamptons families have transformed their homes into makeshift camps. Whether grouped with friends and neighbors or going it alone, these families have created activity schedules that will give their children structure, exercise and entertainment—and parents some downtime.
“Even though I am running a business, managing a lot of projects under construction in three states and overseeing a nonprofit institute, I don’t have the skill set to teach sports to boys who are 6, 8 and 10 and need attention from when they wake up until they fall asleep,” said Mr. Greene, who added a small sailboat and a peddle kayak to his private marina, and set up a soccer field in his yard.
The property feels more rustic and camp-like than most houses on Long Island’s East End. It has a long driveway that winds through wooded areas, past a 3,000-square-foot, three-bedroom, three-bathroom main house and five smaller residences. Mr. Greene, who purchased the compound in 2011 for just under $40 million, plans to replace his main house with a $20 million, 24,000-square-foot home, but the current layout works well right now.
“This is much more conducive to making a camp for my kids than the single mansions owned by some of my friends,” he said. “I grew up in a lower-middle-class Massachusetts home in the shadow of the Kennedys and I always wanted a compound.”
Mr. Greene is housing the counselors on the property, and though they are supervising just three boys, he is paying them at least what they made at the Maine camp.
“Takajo has been my summer job for the last six years and my wife and I count on it,” said Steve Olivas, the camp’s tennis head. “Jeff asked what my salary was there, I told him $8,000 for the season and he matched it.” Carson Stevens, who was waterfront director at Takajo, and who has kayaks, canoes, a 43-foot fishing boat and Jet Skis at his disposal, is earning $600 a week. “It’s more than I made at camp,” he said.
On a rainy July afternoon, the boys are inside a playroom, where a new $2,000 kiln stands ready for arts and crafts projects like making creative clay figures.
Cameron Greene with his family’s jet skis. His father, Jeff Greene, turned the family’s 55-acre compound into a summer camp when his sons’ regular camp was canceled.
“My wife was very relieved when the counselors arrived,” said Mr. Greene. “She smiled, handed the boys over and asked, `when is visiting day?’ ”
At the home of Howard Sobel, a postmodern, 5,000-square-foot, five-bedroom, 5½-bathroom estate, which he built in Water Mill, N.Y., for $2.5 million in 2000 after purchasing the land for $700,000, summer routine has also been disrupted. Usually, the cosmetic dermatologist’s sprawling lawn, which borders Mecox Bay, hosts events like a dinner party with guests such as Katie Couric and Douglas Elliman CEO Dottie Herman. But this year, the soiree has been canceled and the lawn has been co-opted by more diminutive visitors.
A trio of girls, Dr. Sobel’s 8-year-old daughter Sienna and two neighborhood friends, are gyrating their hips and hopping about as a dance instructor calls out cues. Just past a fence, Dr. Sobel’s son, 11-year-old Jake, is in a training session with a basketball coach and out front, in a more shaded area, a group of seven women, including Dr. Sobel’s wife, Brittney Sobel, are bouncing infants on their laps while Nick Levy from Little Maestros sings songs and blows bubbles on the group, to the babies’ delight.
Rather than shelling out $8,000 for their daughter’s day camp and $16,000 for their son’s stay at Raquette Lake in the Adirondacks, the couple has created their own at-home camp for themselves and a few invited friends. There were five campers on a recent July afternoon. The Sobels are footing the $100 an hour for a dance instructor and $150 an hour for a basketball coach, and each mother pays $40 a child for Mommy and Me sessions.
“The outside of the house works well because we have so many separate areas, as well as a pool and basketball court, so a lot of activities can go on at once,” said Dr. Sobel.
Dr. Sobel has a Boston Whaler docked outside his home, so he built boat trips into the program. “We tool around and look at other people’s homes and I wonder why I’m not in finance,” he laughed.
Despite all the effort, a certain summer camp magic seems elusive. “This is fun but at normal camp we zip line across the lake and go on waterslides,” said 6-year-old Caroline Smith, whose parents live a mile from the Sobels, as she raced off to cycle with her 8-year-old sister and Sienna. The trio were then scheduled to cool off in the pool and await the Good Humor truck, set to arrive at 3 p.m.
Jake, who is perfecting his basketball moves, agreed. “This is very cool, but I miss the water sports,” he said.
The same can’t be said for the 10 children who assemble at the home of Danny Davis, a New York real-estate agent. It’s a four-bedroom, 2,650-square foot saltbox in Montauk, blocks from Ditch Plains beach. He and his wife Lisa Verkuyl Davis purchased it in 2017 for $1.15 million and then renovated. The Davises’ have five children aged 7 to 17. With a couple of neighbors, they organized a schedule that includes instruction from Lars Mersburg of Imagine Swimming, whose hourly rate is $180 per person, and lessons from surfing gurus Leif and Ariel Engstrom, who charge $175 an hour for the first child and $99 for each additional child.
“We were uncomfortable sending our children to camp, but we trust a core group of families that have all been out here since mid-March,” said Mr. Davis. “It was organic for us to do this together and we all pitch in.”
On a sunny Wednesday, four boys played soccer within feet of six girls practicing yoga, with instructor, Kat Ruiz. But the highlight of the day was surfing.
“This is 110% better than camp because we are in the water and with our friends,” said Michael Gath, 13.
“In regular camp we do boring stuff like make bracelets, but here we are surfing!” said 10-year-old Simon Dellaert.
Glenn Raff had launched a children’s fitness business called Hoplite Club in January for home visits, and studio and streaming classes. Mr. Raff decided to operate a small camp at his Shelter Island home instead once Covid struck. He added a $1,000 fire pit for s’mores to the ranch home he and his wife Haleigh Raff purchased in 2014 for $975,000, and spent another $1,000 on pool supplies including a basketball net. The large backyard worked well for games and relay races, and they set up a beading station for making jewelry.
“We used everything we had in our toolbox,’’ said Mr. Raff, who enlisted the family dog to act as a one-animal petting zoo. For staff, the Raffs brought on Matt Scheff, former director of operations and programming at Camp Laurel in Maine, and hired a local college student, Julia Labrozzi, at $15 an hour, to assist and make sure children were appropriately distanced. They had an average of eight children at a time during their two-week camp this June, and charged $200 for each participant.
“These children had been separated from others for months, so they were worried and socialization was more difficult,’’ said Mrs. Raff. “They kept asking when they needed masks and when they were allowed to take them off. One was afraid to go into the house to use the bathroom. It was great to see kids being kids again, but it was a lot to do well and make sure everyone was safe.’’
CAMPENINGS 