So sick of this irresponsible stupidity
An Illinois church camp for teenagers and an affiliated men's conference that did not mandate masks or require attendees to be vaccinated or tested for the coronavirus have been linked to at least 180 infections, according to new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The investigation, published Tuesday in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, shows that a five-day overnight summer camp and a two-day men's conference held in June, both of which were sponsored by a church, led to scores of coronavirus cases across three states. The summer camp outbreak occurred at the Crossing Camp in Rushville, Ill., which is affiliated with The Crossing, a nondenominational Christian church with locations in Illinois, Missouri and Iowa, according to the Chicago Tribune.
No deaths have been reported from the outbreak, but five people were hospitalized, the CDC said, noting that all of the hospitalizations involved unvaccinated patients. Twenty-nine people who were vaccinated ended up getting infected in the outbreak, according to the CDC. Health officials pointed to the highly transmissible delta variant as a catalyst for an outbreak that eventually exposed more than 1,100 people in four states to the virus.
"The high rate of transmission was likely driven by the number of persons infected with the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant," the report says.
Messages left for the camp and The Crossing were not immediately returned Wednesday.
The central Illinois summer camp held between June 13 and 17, which did not require teens to be vaccinated, tested or masked, had groups of about 100 people sleep in "large, shared boarding facilities," according to the CDC. The camp made no mention of masks in the "What to Bring" section of its website, but it urged campers to bring items such as water shoes, a pen and the Bible.
A camper left early on June 16 with "fever and respiratory symptoms" and later tested positive for the virus, the report says. Then at least six of the staff members who eventually tested positive left camp to attend the affiliated men's conference at a different location on June 18 and 19.
In late June, the Illinois Department of Public Health announced that more than 80 teens and adults at the camp had tested positive, with officials saying they knew of "only a handful of campers and staff receiving the vaccine." Ngozi Ezike, director of the Health Department, noted in a statement that the majority of the coronavirus cases at the camp were among teens.
