As coronavirus restrictions ease in Southern California, parents have been pelted with pitches for kids’ spring programs and summer camps. School districts are planning summer school and extra tutoring to make up for pandemic-inspired learning losses. Families are pondering long-postponed trips to see loved ones and ease acute wanderlust. But Junior is sick of you and wants to play with his friends.
“Capacity is limited and many camps are already full!” one mailer reads. “We encourage you to sign up as soon as possible.”
Uncertainty nags at parents: Is it safe?
It’s easy to get hyper-excited as the economy opens further, more people get vaccinated and we wake from what feels like a long nightmare. Yes, we can do more things safely in summer 2021, experts said, but it’s important to be smart.
Summer day camp?
Youth organizations are taking reservations for splash camps and STEAM camps, sports leagues and service projects, gardening clubs and horsemanship training.
Should you let Junior go to day camp?
Yes, experts said — with proper protections, of course.
“We now know that while children can and do get infected, they don’t get as sick as adults. Younger children are not nearly as efficient transmitters as adults and older kids,” said George Rutherford, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at UC San Francisco. “Day camps that provide all the mitigation — masks, distancing, ventilation, limited capacity — should be fine.”
Grace Lee, professor of pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine and an infectious diseases physician at Stanford Children’s Health, agrees. Ideally, day camps are outdoors and children are kept in small, consistent “bubbles” without a lot of mixing, in addition to the masking and distancing, she said.
The caveat is that what’s true today will likely be different soon enough. Things could get darker — it’s unclear if the COVID-19 variants will mean greater transmittability or sickness — and they could get lighter, with more vaccinations translating into broader protection.
Indeed, Los Angeles County’s public health director, Barbara Ferrer, warned on Thursday, April 1: “Highly contagious variants are spreading throughout the country, and we continue to have concerns about the increased risk of transmission during spring break, holiday travel and parties.”
That’s why, experts say, it’s extremely important to remain vigilant on mitigation measures now, with the end so close in sight.
Overnight camp?
Some youth groups are holding off on offering overnight camps — who’s going to wear a mask when they sleep? — but many others are offering sleepover surf camps, equestrian camps, art camps and wilderness camps that last from a week to a month.
The experts aren’t quite as excited about these.
“Sleepover camp might be pushing it,” Rutherford said.
Last summer, despite the pandemic, a sleepover camp in Georgia hosted hundreds of kids and staffers in the wilderness for weeks of “vigorous” cheering, singing and merriment. Staffers were required to wear cloth masks, but children were not. The camp did not keep doors and windows open as suggested for greater ventilation. Campers slept overnight in cabins with an average of 15 people.
The Centers for Disease Control found that 76% of the campers and staffers whose test results were available were infected with COVID-19.
Literature from sleepover camps suggest they’ve learned this lesson and will require masks and distancing for participants this year, and will assign just a few campers to sleep in each cabin. Parents will want to inquire about the details before shipping kids off.
Is it safe to travel?
All adults who want a vaccine should be eligible for one by peak summer travel season. Air travel is ramping up. The destinations of our hearts’ desires — be it grandma’s house or the beaches of Cancun — beckon seductively, like sirens on far shores.
Should parents — vaccinated or not — take their kids on longed-for trips?
The experts aren’t keen on this either.
“We have no big trips planned,” said Lee, who has two children. “I just don’t see the need to take a risk right now.”
Rutherford was more emphatic. “The current recommendation is, ‘Don’t do it,’ ” he said. “The CDC doesn’t want anybody doing it. Only a quarter of our country’s population has gotten a single dose. The message is, until we get word from the CDC, we should be sitting tight and not pushing our luck.”
The complexities are layered here. Most other nations are not vaccinating their citizens as quickly at the U.S. is, and don’t have the same access to the COVID-19 vaccine as industrialized Western nations do. Even within Europe, countries are fighting over access. It’s unclear if vaccinated people would still be protected against variants of the virus that are circulating in other parts of the world, and it’s unclear if they could bring those variants back and infect others at home.
Summer school?
California schools, which are getting billions of dollars to regain instruction ground lost to the pandemic, are planning summer sessions and one-on-one tutoring.
Should your kids go?
To that, the experts give two thumbs up — so long as strict precautions are taken. Lee calls it the “Swiss cheese model,” and it involves overlapping layers of protection — proper masking, sanitation, physical distancing, air filtration, keeping social “bubbles” as small as possible, ensuring children don’t show up at school when they’re sick. Lee likens it to Swiss cheese because there are holes in any one of the layers, but piled atop one another, none of those holes show through.
Rutherford agrees. “So long as the child is wearing the mask and school is set up to minimize risk through ventilation and distancing, the risk is small. It’s there, but very small,” he said. “If the kid gets infected, the risk of getting sick is small, and the risk of getting very sick is very small.
“I’m a great believer in outside under a tent,” he said. “Have you seen pictures of kids during the flu pandemic in the winter of 1918 and 1919, at tent schools with banks of snow at their feet? Yeah. That.”
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