To accompany “Four summer camps show how to limit COVID-19 outbreaks”

SCIENCE

Before Reading:

1. The COVID-19 pandemic has been in the news since it went global early in 2020. What makes this infection particularly noteworthy and especially easy to spread?

2. How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected you, your family and your school?

During Reading:

1.  Although this story describes the experiences of summer camps in Maine, from where else did its staff and campers come?

2.  What four tactics did the camps use to keep the novel coronavirus from spreading?

3.  How does this story describe a bubble and how did bubbling make it easier to limit the spread of COVID-19?

4.  A total of how many people got infected with the novel coronavirus at these four camps?

5.  Why does Laura Blaisdell liken to “swiss cheese” the different public-health control tactics that these four camps used?

6.  Based on what you learned in the story, why might the camps’ success in controlling the infection be harder to reproduce in schools?

After Reading:

1. How seriously has the COVID-19 pandemic affected your area? Check with your state’s health department or the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 dashboard to find out the number of cases in your state or nation. List which of the virus-control tactics you and your family use. Do others in your community tend to use them, too?

2. Has your school started classes in person following the summer break? If so, what infection-control measures is it using? Compare them to the options available to schools, right now. If your classes are taking place “virtually,” how well is your family bubbling? Describe how your family works to limit exposures by every member to the new coronavirus. How does this compare to what the summer camps did?