Camping For Children In Pandemic Era

Thinking of the summer camp will be impossible in the not too distant future that will be likely bringing smiles to those parents’ faces that want to push their children to schools in the name of depression and anxiety and don’t care about their child’s well-being.

Camping For Children In Pandemic Era

Considering the kids splashing in the pool trying and getting messy with crafts and art, then running around for a soccer or baseball match would probably be a great welcome break for the children. Especially for those parents that were unable to get them into anything constructive except for playing Roblox games consecutively, or spending excess time on the social media, or endless Zooming.

But it is true, camp for an opportunity for teens and children for socializing with friends through in-person interaction which the schools would not necessarily allow the children after being forcibly opened by the parents.

But the main question which arises is that would it be safe for the child for attending any day camp or a sleepaway camp this summer?

In the 2021, all the camp directors are planning various aspects of the camp with the pandemic in mind as said by Rhino Merrick, who is the camp director at the Camp Sloane YMCA at Lakeville, in Connecticut, that operates both sleepaway camps and  day camp on this same property.

This research has demonstrated that many camps are implementing various non pharmaceutical multilayered interventions — which includes mitigation strategies like  physical distancing, maintaining cohorts or small groups and masking. When the comp owners do these things diligently and consistently, some research says that they will be able to operate safely in person as said by Tom Rosenberg, who is the president and the CEO of the American Camp Association.

There have been around 102 Covid-19 cases which have been reported around 500 camps that are serving around 90,000 campers in the previous year, as per the Tufts University study which was funded by ACA in part. This number has represented around less than 1% of staff and campers. This outcome is related to the camps that adopted various strategies which had halted the spread of the Covid-19, which included its quarantining, cohorting, sanitization practices, and contact tracing.

In the previous summer when they were in the midst of this pandemic, they had run their day camps with no incidents safely. This was shared by the day camper entirely in the tri-state — and the sleepaway camps which operated with some tough protocols across the U.S. and with some rare exceptions. They had some excellent results, as said Jay Jacobs, who is the CEO of TLC Family of Camps and also director of the Timber Lake Camp at Shandaken in New York.

Jacobs added that he thinks that all are in a much better situation than last year, and that is basically because all staff are going to be vaccinated and people will be less scared to interact with each other. 

He further added that today’s scenario is much different from yesterday’s because at the time of initialization of this disease nobody knew how to deal with this disease. But  we know so much more now. Besides after the hectic work schedule and overload of work all need a break. They need something like camping, etc. To be precise the staff needs to go outside and connect with other campers.

Kagan said that we know so much more now. Camp directors are expert planners and that we are going to be prepared. He added that safety of our campers is our first priority.