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A church held a five-day night camp for teens and a two-day men’s conference in Illinois in June. No COVID-19 testing or vaccination was required, and there were no rules regarding wearing masks. This resulted in the infection of 180 people, according to a new report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The camp was held June 13-17 and the conference June 18-19 by a religious organization with sites in western Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri, whose name was not given in the report. The two events took place at different locations but had a certain crossover among the participants.
The cases included 87 campers and 35 conference participants. Most of those people were not vaccinated, the CDC said. Fifty-eight secondary cases of COVID-19 have been identified in close contacts of the participants. The Delta variant make up most cases.
No one has died from the epidemic. However, 13 people were treated in the emergency room and five people had to be hospitalized. Not all hospitalized people were vaccinated.
Overall, the CDC said, 1,127 people from at least four states have been exposed to COVID-19 either by attending religious gatherings or by coming into close contact with someone who had.
“These results highlight the risk of COVID-19 outbreaks in camps and large events where prevention strategies are not implemented,” the CDC said in its report, adding that vaccines and preventive measures such as masking, physical distancing and seclusion can reduce the spread of infections and serious complications.
The CDC says its investigation “likely underestimates” the number of infections and exposures because it only used data from lab-confirmed cases; data does not include people who have not been tested or who have not used home tests. Additionally, not all infected campers and conference attendees cooperated in the contact tracing, so some potential exhibits were likely missed.
The majority of the 180 cases were from the camp, according to the CDC, which had 41 staff members and 294 teenagers between the ages of 14 and 18. together in a cafeteria and organized small and large group activities indoors and outdoors.
A camper left the camp on June 16 after developing a fever and respiratory symptoms. When tested positive for COVID-19, campers and staff were “encouraged” to get tested and ordered to quarantine if they tested positive, the CDC said.
The two-day conference brought together 30 staff and 500 attendees, including six people who had also been youth camp staff. These staff members attended the conference without first receiving their COVID test results. The conference’s first case was diagnosed two days after it ended, although three people reported being symptomatic during the conference.
And this camp is not the only one linked to the COVID epidemics. The CDC found that as of Aug. 7, there had been outbreaks in at least 21 night camps in Illinois alone.
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