Andrews – Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters concluded their summer camp season with the most known group of COVID-19 cases in Cherokee County to date.
Camps are determined to have an outbreak when two or more people test positive. The Snowbird outbreak resulted in 23 people testing positive for the virus, with results coming back Aug. 16-23, including four people who live in other states, according to information provided by the Cherokee County Health Department.
In comparison, John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown had nine people test positive, including two people from other states and two Clay County residents, after attending a dance in March before COVID restrictions began.
“It doesn’t mean they did anything wrong,” Cherokee County Health Director David Badger said.
He added that it’s part of the reality of the virus that, even in the best of situations, the community has to accept that we won’t be 100 percent successful in preventing positive cases.
Brody Holloway, co-founder and executive director of Snowbird, said they worked directly with the local health department and state Department of Health & Human Services on opening the camp. In fact, his team delayed the season by three weeks to bring the camp up to compliance with guidelines set by the state. Plus, he was in contact with the local health department at least weekly, at times daily.
“It wasn’t like we were running a rogue organization,” Holloway said.
Snowbird’s camp season ended Aug. 15 after only operating nine of 12 planned weeks. Throughout the summer, about 4,000 people visited the camp, which offers gospel-centered sessions and high-adventure recreation, and no campers tested positive.
“The protocols we put in place actually worked,” Holloway said.
Leaders did what they could to prevent the virus from spreading through the camp throughout the season – temperatures were taken and logged every morning, attendees stayed in cohort groups and separated from other groups, sites were sanitized as groups rotated through the campground and no one was allowed to leave the property.
While in their cohort groups, attendees were not required to wear masks per state guidelines, but they had to wear masks whenever they interacted with staff or other cohorts. The staff was its own cohort group.
Other measures included using the 20,000-square-foot music hall at the former Bear Ridge Mall instead of their 4,000-square-foot worship hall, constructing an additional shower house, creating a second dining hall out of an existing building to accommodate meal schedules, and adding sinks and sanitizing stations at the entrances to buildings.
Holloway said about 50 of 180 staff members attended a brunch the weekend before camp ended. The brunch took place in staff housing, although not a Snowbird event.
Two staff members soon noticed they had lost their sense of taste or smell. Those staff members were tested and quarantined for the remainder of the camp season, Holloway said.
While contact tracing has not determined how the first two staff members got the virus, it is believed the brunch is where the virus was spread to other staff members, who live in a dormitory-like setting at the camp. Holloway said each staff member got 48 hours off each week, and he couldn’t tell them what to do on their off day, but he did ask them not to “overrun the community.”
For the most part, staff stayed on Snowbird grounds on off days, he said. The camp was at about 65 percent capacity the final week, with about 100 campers.
The first cases of the outbreak were reported on Aug. 16, when the Cherokee County Health Department announced that four staff members who live in other states tested positive for the virus.
Holloway said all groups who attended the final week of camp were notified of the positive cases, and that all staff were quarantined and isolated. The camp was shut down for two weeks.
“We went above and beyond,” he said.
Holloway said a large number of staff were tested, even those who didn’t need to be. Of those who tested positive, only one person was sick enough that they felt they had a really bad flu for a week, while several others only lost their sense of taste or smell for about 48 hours. A majority experienced no symptoms at all.
From Aug. 16-23, 56 percent of cases reported by the health department were were linked to Snowbird. Holloway admitted he and his staff are not experts in the spread of viruses, but did follow the experts’ guidelines in how they ran the camp and did their best to take care of everyone.
“Everything was done in compliance with the state and county,” he said.