Georgia camp with COVID-19 outbreak didn´t require masks

Coronavirus spread to 260 campers and staff at a single Georgia overnight summer camp last month, a new report reveals.  

The camp took a number of Vajrasana Precautions to prevent a coronavirus outbreak, including having staff members wear masks. 

But it stopped short of making its campers wear masks and many of its buildings did not have proper ventilation in buildings, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report released Friday.

Health officials said ‘relatively large’ groups of kids slept in the same cabin where they regularly sang and cheered, likely leading to spread.

Two thirds of the people infected were children under 18. 

It comes as President Trump pushes for schools to reopen this fall and public health officials attempt to weigh the risks of coronavirus spreading among students versus the risks of having them miss out on in-person learning.  

Coronavirus spread like wildfire to at least 130 children at a Georgia summer camp, a CDC report reveals 

Nearly 600 people were at the overnight camp, which was not named in the report by Georgia health officials and the CDC, and among the 344 campers on whom data was available to the agency, three-quarters tested positive. 

Reports emerged in June that a large outbreak occurred at the time at a YMCA camp at Lake Burton in Rabun County, near the state’s northern border with North Carolina.

Campers ranged in age from six to 19, and many of the staffers were teenagers.

Cabins had between 16 to 26 people. 

The report said this was ‘relatively large’ but doesn’t clearly say if it was too many. Health investigators did fault the camp for not opening enough windows and doors to increase circulation in buildings.

 The summer camp was not named in the CDC study, but the timeline and location align with reports of an outbreak of coronavirus at the YMCA Camp HIgh Harbour at Lake Burton in Georgia (pictured)

A teenage staff member developed chills on the evening of June 22 and left the camp the following day, the report said. 

The camp began sending campers home two days later when the staffer got a positive test result for coronavirus. 

The camp notified state health officials and closed the camp on June 27.

Test results were available for 344 people and 260 of them – about three-quarters – were positive.

The percentage of campers infected was higher among younger kids than older kids, the report found. 

It also was higher in kids who were at the camp for longer periods of time.

Officials recorded information about symptoms for only 136 kids.

Of those, 100 reported symptoms – mostly fever, headache and sore throat.