In the past, we’ve heard that children may be immune to coronavirus, which was great news. However, over the past few months, we’ve seen a number of kids become affected by the virus, and now there’s been hundreds of little ones to get it after attending YMCA Camp High Harbour at Lake Burton, a sleep-away camp in Georgia.
The camp did require COVID-19-related precautions, such as wearing masks for employees (not fo campers, though), but unfortunately, it either wasn’t enough to prevent cases.
Out of the 344 campers and counselors who attended the camp who got tested for the virus, 260 tested positive for the virus. Out of those, 168 were children. Of those children, 51 were between ages 6 and 10. Another 180 campers were between 11 and 17 and 27 of them were between ages 18 and 21 years.
The outbreak at the camp was so bad that it had to shut down the camp after just three days of being open.
“These findings demonstrate that SARS-CoV-2 spread efficiently in a youth-centric overnight setting, resulting in high attack rates among persons in all age groups, despite efforts by camp officials to implement most recommended strategies to prevent transmission,” a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated.
It didn’t seem like social distancing was regularly enforced, as campers participated in a range of both indoor and outdoor activities before the diagnoses went down.
“Relatively large cohorts sleeping in the same cabin and engaging in regular singing and cheering likely contributed to transmission,” said the CDC. “Use of cloth masks, which has been shown to reduce the risk for infection, was not universal.”
To hear more about the camp outbreak, check out the video below.
Do you think camps should have opened in Georgia? What do you think we could be doing to avoid more coronavirus cases in children like this incident?