Illinois Summer Camp Outbreak Shows Virus is Sill Not to be Taken Lightly

 


A Central Illinois summer "camp" for kids had an outbreak of COVID-19 affecting 85 people at the facility, and cross-infecting 11 people at a conference being held nearby. According to reports, most of those affected at Crossing Camp in Rushville, about 60 miles northwest of Springfield, were kids.

One kid was hospitalized. The camp was not checking the vaccination status of kids attending, and reportedly only a few of the attendees and staffers had been vaccinated.  The camp said it was following CDC guidelines for cleaning and sanitation.  

A few comments about this.  First, what is it with Illinois and mass infections?  Three months ago I blogged about another event that took place in a bar by someone who knew they were infected. Aren't Midwesterners supposed to be cautious and pragmatic?  Illinois ain't Florida!

Second, a kid was sent to the hospital. This shows that the virus is still not to be taken lightly, even for young people.  

Third, this also shows why we ought to be requiring vaccinations for participation in activities where people are going to be in close quarters for extended periods.  The same goes for cruise ships and other mass transportation.

Fourth, various media reports brought up the Delta variant. So did Governor J.B. Pritzker, who said state health officials are working with the CDC to identify the variant involved.  He used to occasion to plead with people to get jabbed.

It seems unlikely that this outbreak was caused by Delta, though, because according to the GISAID database only 10% of Illinois sequences in June were of that variant. That is compared to 24% for the U.S. overall during the same month.

Finally, this demonstrates that the CDC ought to do more to educate outfits like that camp that cleaning and sanitation, while good to do, aren't enough to prevent spread of the virus. I can imagine that the people managing the place thought they were doing all the could/should. 

But even the CDC now admits that the problem is airborne transmission. Cleaning does nothing about that. There are only two ways to prevent airborne transmission.  Either don't have things like summer camp, or make sure people participating are vaccinated.

Image by Crossing Camp

Popular posts from this blog

Looks Like Immune Responses are Enduring After All

Image
 For some time, public health officials have fretted about whether immunity to COVID-19, acquired via infection or vaccination would stick.  Studies showed rapid declines in antibodies during recovery from infection and thereafter . It turns out that this concern was overblown. A study just released says bone marrow plasma cells are a persistent source of protective antibodies, and that "circulating resting memory B cells directed against the S protein were detected in the convalescent individuals."   Another study , yet to be reviewed, suggests that vaccines boost this effect. In fact, some are suggesting this situation this could actually mean  lifetime immunity .   Whether the same thing happens with vaccination is not clear. Most estimates suggest that vaccine immunity will last about a year . More pessimistic estimates putting the protection period at six months .  The possible shorter time frame, plus the appearance of the new variants, have the vaccine makers working
Read more

Another One Bites the Dust

Image
Hi all. Stepping out of retirement for a moment to say that the day has finally arrived. After four years of successfully avoiding COVID-19 infection I had a positive test yesterday. Symptoms are very mild—I've had worse colds. The provider at urgent care said almost all the cases they are seeing are the same. Mild symptoms may also be due to the fact that I had the original vaccine then the two boosters. All this time I thought I might be a NOVID —one of those people who never get the bug. But no, it must have been my assiduous mask wearing and avoidance of high-risk situations when things were bad. So here's double middle fingers to all the kooks who think masks don't work (I've not been wearing masks for months now). I don't know what variant I have but it's likely JN.1. It is said to be extraordinarily contagious and accounts for 60% of cases worldwide . It also tends to produce mild infections like the one I have.  This article claims that right now every
Read more

AZ Pandemic Numbers Summary for the Seven Days Ending November 9: Everything is Going South

Image
Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: Well this isn't good. The lull seems to be over. Virtually every number is up, both over a week and over four weeks. The most worrisome is hospital beds, which have been steadily trending up over the last several weeks.  Wastewater signals are all up except Tempe (dashboard is up again) which after going up last week (from 41 to 100) decreased by about 10%. The increases are worrisome because the latest data from ASU's Lim Lab (last updated October 31), where they sequence PCR samples to identify variants, shows that only about 46% of sequences showed BA.5. That is one of the Omicron variants the new bivalent vaccine was designed to protect against.  All the rest of the samples are BA.2.75 (7.7%), which I flagged several weeks ago, and BQ,1.1 (15.4%), and BQ.1 (30.8%), both of which I blogged about a couple weeks ago.  Those, new research confirms , are much more lik
Read more