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Measures to restrict the spread of coronavirus, such as masking, grouping of young people in cohorts, and social estrangement, have helped more than 1,000 young people and staff at Maine summer camps get the infection.
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While the coronavirus hit communities across the United States over the summer, four night camps in Maine controlled to keep the virus at bay.
Of the other 1,022 people who participated in the summer camps, which included campers and staff, only 3 tested positive for COVID-19, the researchers reported on 26 August in the weekly morbidity and mortality report. This is because others who arrived in Maine from 41 states in the U.S., Puerto Rico, Bermuda and five other countries diligently followed the public aptitude measures put in place to prevent transmission, according to the team.
The good luck of the camps, as well as others, by adding child care systems in Rhode Island that limited the transmission of the coronavirus, can point the way for positions such as schools that are reopening with face-to-face courses in the face of the ongoing pandemic, demanding situations remain.
In the camps, a series of tests, social bubbles, social estrangement, masks, quarantine and isolation prevented epidemics.
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Before arriving at the camp, officials told the 642 young men and 380 staff members to quarantine the property with their families for 10 to 14 days. Participants were also given the COVID-19 test five to seven days before their arrival, with the exception of 12 other people who had been diagnosed in the past. Four other people tested positive for the virus and stayed away for 10 days at home before going to one of the camps, which were in consultation on other occasions from mid-June to mid-August. (Three of the 4 camps lasted less than 50 days and the other for 62 days).
Once there, campers and staff participated in daily symptom checks and largely outdoor activities. They also joined in small “bubbles,” or cohorts, ranging from five to 44 other people and have become like a circle of relatives the weeks they spent in the camp, according to the researchers. If other people interacted with someone outdoors in their group, a mask and social estrangement were needed.
“We try to give young people the opportunity to have a circle unit of relatives in the camp they don’t want to be masked or socially away from,” says Laura Blaisdell, a pediatrician at the Maine Medical Center Research Institute in Scarborough who worked on the new report.
Participants arrived in Maine by car, bus and plane and may have simply been exposed to the virus after their initial test, so officials re-evaluated the 1006 participants who had never had COVID-19 4 to nine days after their arrival.
In this series of checks, two staff members and a camper from three other camps tested positive but never developed symptoms. His cohorts were quarantined for two weeks, however, “they still had to have a camping experience … and keep laughing and playing together,” Says Blaisdell. The 3 positive cases did not transmit the virus to anyone until they were identified. They all remained remote until they had two negative control results.
More than 1,000 people from 41 U.S. states, as well as Puerto Rico, Bermuda and several other countries, participated in summer camps in Maine from mid-June to mid-August. The map shown here shows which states staff members and staff members are. (No one came here from white states). Many other people traveled from states like Texas and Florida that were heavily affected during the summer (average rate of seven-day coronavirus infection calculated on July 1, illustrated), however, the camp audience fitness measures prevented outbreaks. States with fewer than 10 cases consistent with 100,000 inhabitants are not designated.
Some others visited Maine from spaces where COVID-19 instances were higher during the summer, adding Texas, Arizona and Florida. But rigorous testing of potential propagators known temporarily and small cohorts allowed officials to temporarily identify those at risk of contracting the virus.
In this way, “the cohort is a forgotten hero of public intervention,” Blaisdell says.
While interventions such as cohorts, social distance and masking can help decrease coronavirus transmission to some extent, each technique has limitations. Combining these techniques into a layered technique in which other people adhere to various rules to stop the spread of the virus, as Maine camps have done, can generate more members on the network.
“Every layer of public fitness is like a layer of Swiss cheese with a hole,” says Blaisdell. It is the stacking of “several layers of cheese on the most sensitive of the other that closes those holes and shapes a forged plan to combat [infectious] diseases.”
In contrast, a summer camp in Georgia faced an outbreak of viruses even after asking participants to provide evidence of negative control prior to arrival. But there, the campers were not obliged to wear masks, were not controlled after their arrival at the camp and participated in indoor and outdoor activities (SN: 31/07/20).
However, the remote nature of summer camps in Maine has probably made creating a relatively COVID-19-free bubble much less difficult than it would be in K-12 schools or universities across the country, where other people come and go and possibly wouldn’t live. There. (SN: 8/4/20). There were staff members from the 4 camps in Maine who went home every day, however, those other people had to wear a mask at all times and at a social distance from the other participants. It is also very likely that the amount of coronavirus circulating in Maine is a fairly low camp operation.
In addition, the larger the school, the more likely it is, it will be difficult for public fitness interventions to be met. “If you stick to the rules, you can surely succeed,” says Brian Nichols, virologist at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. expect other people not to follow the rules.
However, good luck in Maine suggests that containing the virus is imaginable with a targeted layered approach, Says Blaisdell. “As schools and schools begin to consider openness, they want to see their network as a bubble,” he says. “We all have to participate in contracts between us about the behaviors we’re going to adopt.”
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L.L. Blaisdell et al. Prevention and mitigation of SARS-CoV-2 transmission – 4 night camps, Maine, June – August 2020. Weekly morbidity and mortality report. August 26, 2020. doi: 10.15585/mmwr.mm6935e1.
A. Link-Gelles and cabbage. LIMITED secondary transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in child care systems – Rhode Island, from June 1 to July 31, 2020. Weekly morbidity and mortality report. August 21, 2020. doi: 10.15585 / mmwr.mm6934e2.
Erin I. García de Jesús is editor of Science News. He’s got a PhD. University of Washington and a master’s degree in clinical communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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