HOME › Forums › Camp Health › Vaccine requirement for overnight camp summer 2022
- This topic has 14 replies, 12 voices, and was last updated 2 years, 9 months ago by
Jennifer Costello.
-
AuthorPosts
-
December 1, 2021 at 2:45 pm #43479
Sarah Kennedy
ParticipantHas anyone made a decision about a vaccine requirement for summer 2022 at their summer camp? Would love to get a sense of what peer overnight camps are thinking and when camps plan to communicate this to families.
December 2, 2021 at 9:29 am #43480Aja Hutchins
MemberWe are just talking about it now. Interested to hear if/what others have decided.
December 2, 2021 at 12:54 pm #43481Tracey Gaslin
MemberThanks for starting this discussion. I think many camps are in the same place as you – discussing the options for their immunization policy. Some camps are leaning heavily toward requiring the COVID vaccine just as they do the tetanus shot. Other camps want all their staff to be fully vaccinated but are then having more flexibility in their camper population.
If camps don’t require campers to be vaccinated, will they continue to have a robust testing program (at the time and expense of each camper)? Does this impact camp fees to offset costs for continuing to perform COVID tests onsite?
Now that most every individual in the age range to attend camps (may be a few exceptions in children <5 yr who attend day camp) has access to vaccination, I think we will see a shift in these policies to protect the camp communities. I would encourage you to investigate what the school policies are in your camp’s area and see what they will be doing. Many camps follow the state/school requirements with their policies as well.
Keep up the good discussion. Love to hear more.
Tracey GaslinDecember 7, 2021 at 2:36 pm #43493Anne Isedeh
ParticipantI was going to say the same thing, check with your local school district and mirror their requirements.
Let’s remember we want our camps not to be the “breakout” spots. This will be more detrimental to our camp reputations in the communities than it would to enforce testing and or vaccines or enforce mask wearing and social distancing.
-Anne
NJ Camp NurseDecember 9, 2021 at 5:48 pm #43499Katherine Teigen
ParticipantI just met with my camp’s summer operations committee to discuss immunization policies. We didn’t have a written policy for any immunizations, although we should. We are an ACA accreditation camp so we do require attestation from parents that the camper has received immunizations required by the school. We struggled last year to even have a masking requirement because of the spectrum of opinions in our camp community. We have thankfully gone the last two summers with no covid cases in both our camper and staff populations. Last summer we had a camp cold outbreak which I think opened leadership eyes to how easily communicable disease spread.
Long story short…. We felt that our mitigation measures were strong enough to protect our low risk population so we will not prevent un-vaccinated individuals from attending our camp. I’m still working out the wording for the official policy though.
Does anyone know of any camp nurse roundtables or events on this topic? Last spring Association of Cedarbrook camps had a camp nurse zoom call but I haven’t seen anything yet this year, might be too early still.
-
This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by
Katherine Teigen.
December 9, 2021 at 9:29 pm #43501Tracey Gaslin
MemberKatherine:
Thanks for the feedback. I think it is wonderful that you did not have any COVID but what I hear is that you feel that you are “skating on thin ice” due to the fact that you don’t have strong communicable disease protocols.
I would encourage you to pursue development of these policies because now it is COVID, but in 3-5 years, it will be a different virus and you want to be prepared. I can share with you that in our review of camps from summer 2022, there were about 18 camps that had outbreaks of COVID (more than about 10 cases). 16 of the 18 were Christian camps that did not want to enforce nonpharmaceutical interventions. I would love to be able to connect with organizations like Cedarbrook and provide education about the loving way to care for folks in a pandemic is to use protection measures. You are not the only one with which I have had this conversation. We continue to encourage folks to consider their responsibility in caring for a community as a higher precedent, than what individuals want. I don’t think any of us “want” to wear a mask or have extreme sanitation measures, but we do because it is the loving thing to do for our communities.
Stand strong friend. If ACN can be of assistance in working on your communicable disease protocols (which include immunization policies), we are glad to assist.
Take care
Tracey GaslinDecember 27, 2021 at 10:32 pm #43535Philip Coulling
ParticipantWe have stated that we reserve the right to require all participants to provide proof of vaccination and/or a negative COVID test taken no more than 72 hours before arrival. We will undoubtedly review this requirement in the spring.
April 8, 2022 at 8:21 pm #44536JIll Frey
ParticipantHello everyone,
A lot has changed since this conversation in December. What is everyone thinking now?In December we thought we were going to require vaccination. Now we are backing off of that primarily because it seems that the CDC guidance for quarantine is based on “up to date” vaccination. So, just being vaccinated isn’t getting us anywhere, you also have to be “up to date” with boosters and that seems like a moving target that could change quickly and many younger people who got the initial vaccines are not getting boosters. Also, our schools aren’t doing anything anymore… they are not posing/masking/contact tracing/ and they are not even telling parents if someone was positive in their kid’s classes.
Is anyone willing to share policies now? We are thinking about using the CDC NEW Red/Yellow/Green map saying “if all the counties in our jurisdiction or where campers are primarily coming from” are red, then we will go back to all of the NPIs from last summer. But if they are all “Green or Yellow” (which they are all green now) then we will highly recommend up-to-date vaccines, test upon arrival, and operate as “pre-covid”… until there is a positive test. Then we have a question…. since we won’t be cohorting/poding everyone could be exposed. So we are debating about saying anyone who is not “up to date” needs to go home. We really don’t want to say that as it could be a lot. So, we are wondering if we could implement cohorts/pods and protocols like masks and such at that point and monitor everyone and test after 5 days if they are still there or test everyone immediately. We are mostly one week.
I am wondering if we should require masks and poding inside even for the “green and yellow” plan, but not outside. I”m not sure what that gets us. Because it doesn’t change who may have been in contact for quarantining…
Is there a way to have attachments on these conversations??? I’m not seeing it.
Thanks,
Jill Frey
OhioApril 14, 2022 at 1:16 am #44583Merdina Nash
ParticipantHey Jill,
I am pretty much where you are in my thinking. We are a one-week camp (9 weeks). I was thinking if our campers came from yellow and green areas, we would relax masking, social-distancing, and co-horting but still require pre-screening to include a 5 day self-monitoring/quarantining before coming to camp and testing on the day of departure before coming to camp. We are not requiring vaccines, but strongly encouraging.
Dena
MissouriApril 14, 2022 at 2:39 am #44588SHELLEY SLOAN
ParticipantFor the first time since our camp has begun we are requiring campers and staff to be vaccinated and up to date with boosters for Covid-19. This from a camp that has honored religious exemptions since its inception. The requirements for pre camp activity of campers is still to be decided. We ran a successful, covid free camp last summer. We also incorporated all of the NPI’s that we could!
April 18, 2022 at 5:48 pm #44801Angie Klein
ParticipantWe are requiring the vaccine for all of our staff and campers.
April 22, 2022 at 5:35 am #44887Katie Hilton
ParticipantOur camp is in Canada, in conjunction with our medical advisory panel we have decided not to mandate vaccines, mainly because we feel even if we were to put a mandate in place it doesn’t prevent campers from attending asymptomatically and transmitting to other campers. We are asking all campers to complete a rapid test the night before leaving for camp and an online health screening questionnaire the morning of camp. We also don’t have mandatory masking. We had the opportunity to put all process into practice a few weeks ago with a weekend camp of 42 teens attending. Even though everyone tested negative before arrival within 24 hours we had a camper become symptomatic and then test positive. She was immediately isolated and removed from camp and other campers within her cabin group were tested. What our “trial run” did show us was that we hadn’t allocated enough isolation space for the summer camping weeks. If we had more than 2 people test positive at the same time it would severely restrict access to the health centre, so we’ve relocated the isolation area to a separate cabin for the summer.
We do however have a mandatory vaccine requirement in place for seasonal staff, this is more down to staffing issues than for health reasons. Where we are in Canada, unvaccinated close contacts even without symptoms and a negative test have to isolate for 10 days, which could severely restrict our operations throughout the summer.
I think this will be an ever changing situation, but for sure will be a challenge this summer!
April 28, 2022 at 11:51 pm #44990Jennifer Costello
ParticipantMy question is for the ACH – or Tracey! Does the ACH take a stance on recommendations for COVID protocol? I noticed the CDC info on this site is old, and the CDC in general doesn’t have super new info. Is the ACH recommending simply following CDC recommendations?
My director is wondering if we should treat the unvaccinated campers differently than the vaccinated ones in regards to testing or quarantining. All of the staff and 90% of the campers will be vaccinated.
Right now our plan is to required testing prior to coming and then testing (rapid) symptomatic people.
Any thoughts? Thanks in advance 🙂
April 29, 2022 at 12:15 am #44991Tracey Gaslin
MemberJennifer:
Thanks for the email. There has not been new guidance released from the CDC. At present, it seems that the recommendations this year will be in the form of “best practices”. For example, the CDC recommends best practice in handwashing at camp. This may mean different things for different camps. Another best practice is that individuals arrive to camp in a healthy state. How do we do this? Screening, testing, vaccination? Each camp will have more flexibility to make decisions about what is best practice for their camp.
We know this may make it more challenging for camps but at the same time allows more autonomy that camps had in 2020 & 2021. All of the activities that you share are good ideas. In response to your question about isolation/quarantine for vacc vs unvacc, there is guidance.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/quarantine-isolation.html
In response to your question about testing, CDC also provides some educational information
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/testing/I hope this information is helpful. The next CDC/ACH/ACA Townhall is May 11th – sign up to hear the latest information.
TAke care
Tracey GaslinMay 3, 2022 at 9:49 pm #45048Jennifer Costello
ParticipantThanks so much Tracey! I’ll be there!
-
This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by
-
AuthorPosts
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.