COCUSA’s story
Sunday Evening
Monday Morning
All Week Long
Facts & Figures on Cryptospiridium
Definition
Basics of the disease
How Crypto lives/moves
How to remove Crypto
Clean Up
Immediately
Local Health Department
CDC Study
Report (End of COCUSA story)
Next Spring
Prevention
Cleanliness
Sick Campers
Shower!
New COCUSA policies
Thank you for coming. Feel free to leave if this is not what you expected. I would appreciate your feedback, so please fill out seminar evaluation.
PRAYER
COCUSA’s story – This seminar is about Cryptospiridium, but before we get to that disease, I wanted to tell the story of our experience with it.
Sunday Evening – The most chaotic week in my (admittedly short) camping career began with a board game on Sunday evening. Camp of Champions is a day camp that runs M-F, so we don’t have camp on Sunday. My wife, one of our two directors, and I were playing Settlers of Cataan. Throughout the game I started feeling worse and worse. Chris, our director also was feeling sick. We didn’t think much of it. It was just some stomach pain I attributed to over eating, under eating, or something. We finished our game (Sadly I don’t even remember who won, I’d like to think it was me) and called it a night.
Monday Morning – The chaos began. As I said there were two summer directors, along with myself in charge of our Pekin location. Within 15 minutes of waking up we had exchanged phone calls: all of us feeling too sick to go into work! It was the same as the night before, only more so. Pardon me for being rude, but I had diarrhea and the other directors were vomiting. Luckily our executive director and my wife (in her 3rd trimester) were able to cover for the morning, the day, (and throughout the week). I came in to work just long enough to give the Bible lesson, but I felt terrible. I slept the whole afternoon, waking with a terrible fever, muscle aches all over and (pardon me again) diarrhea. Basically, nothing I ate stayed inside me for very long. While at work, I realized the problem was not isolated to directors. Nearly half of our campers (day camp) were missing, with most of their parents reporting a similar sickness to ours. We also had reports of staff from the previous week feeling sick.
All Week Long – The week was chaos. Literally, the craziest week I have had in Christian camping. It is what I can compare crazy weeks too. We never had more than ¾ of our campers. The 3 directors spent about 5 total days at camp. A solid third of the staff missed at least one day of camp that week. To top it off, we had our local congressman visiting on Friday (for publicity). We were wondering if he would come to a camp of empty kids! While at camp, it was an ever-present thought: what could have caused this? Obviously it was something! We first thought food poisoning. Possibly bad watermelon from the previous Friday cookout. (Most of our campers return every week). We also thought it could have been bad food prep. We were asking everyone what they had eaten the previous Friday, how much they had eaten, etc. It wasn’t really adding up. We thought maybe there was just a bad bug going around. It could have easily been passed around during a normal camp day. Truthfully: we didn’t know and that was scary. Then, on Thursday, a mother who’s boys had been sick gave us a call. They had tested positive for a parasite called: Cryptospiridium.
Facts & Figures on Cryptospiridium
Definition – dictionary.com: an intestinal parasite in humans and other vertebrates that sometimes causes diarrhea. CDC’s website: Once an animal or person is infected, the parasite lives in the intestine and passes in the stool. The parasite is protected by an outer shell that allows it to survive outside the body for long periods of time and makes it very resistant to chlorine- based disinfectants. Both the disease and the parasite are commonly known as "crypto." During the past two decades, crypto has become recognized as one of the most common causes of waterborne disease within humans in the United States. The parasite may be found in drinking water and recreational water in every region of the United States and throughout the world.
Basics of the disease – It was pretty obvious to us what the symptoms were: diarrhea, vomiting, stomach aches, fever, muscles aches, dehydration. The CDC adds nausea and weight loss to that list. Crypto has an incubation period of 2-10 days, which can make it hard to determine where you were infected. The symptoms will last 1-2 weeks, but it is tricky because it can go in cycles. Chris, our director, worked Monday afternoon and felt fine. But then he couldn’t work 2 of the next 4 days. There is no medicine to remove crypto. You can only battle the symptoms. Luckily, the average healthy person will recover in 2 weeks without any additional treatment. More severe cases are possible (I hate to imagine), especially if someone already has a week immunity system. A JC, Heather, battled crypto for a month plus.
How Crypto lives/moves – I kindof knew most of the following information, but I’m paraphrasing CDC’s info so I make sure to get it right. Crypto lives in the intestines of infected humans and animals. It can then spread wherever the animals (or persons) feces are present. (Sorry this is a gross seminar). For example, if a cow has crypto, goes to the bathroom by a stream and you drink water downstream, you can pick it up. This is not really what happens at camps. Once a human has it, it can easily be spread through recreational water (pools, hot tubs, lakes, ponds, etc.) How does it get into that water? It’s gross, but you can probably imagine. It is also spread through uncooked contaminated food and picking it up off surfaces that have been infected. Key: It has to be swallowed (ie not washing hands & drinking pool water).
How to remove Crypto – It is not fun to get rid of. The biggest challenge in removing Crypto is this fact: Normal (adequate) chlorine levels do not kill it. Crypto has a hard shell that protects it for days. E. Coli, for example, will die in 1 ppm chlorinated water in less than a minute. Crypto will take approximately 9600 minutes (Almost 7 DAYS!). Super chlorinating (shocking) the pool will help speed the process. If you raise the cholorine level to 20 ppm it will only need 8 hours to kill the Crypto. (You’re still not swimming the rest of the day.) If you know you had Crypto in your pool then you need to test before you can reenter your water, so it is imperative to have the parasite gone. If it was just a precaution after a camper accident, then you can swim without a test. We were in our second to last week of camp, so we opted to shut down our pool and do without. (We did not want things to get any worse than they were.) We sent the following letter out to our parents.
Clean Up
Immediately – Here’s how our story ended.
Local Health Department – As soon as the health department found out that our campers had crypto, they were all over us. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. They were professional, courteous, and kind. They didn’t think we were bad people for ‘letting this happen.’ They approached it from a ‘how did this happen’ standpoint.
CDC Study – The local health department’s main job was to turn in information about the event to the CDC. So they started a study mandated by the CDC. This included contacting all staff and parents of children who were at camp along with the two boys who tested positive for crypto. They asked them: “have you had these symptoms?” and “when did you get these symptoms?” This meant over 105 phone calls (and no messages!) So basically, everyone (and their mother) was called about the disease. Those two boys also swam at a local water park on our previous week’s field trip, it was also included in the study. Also, I, as the pool manager, had to sit through an hour plus of questions about our pool, our policies, etc. The water park’s pool manager underwent the same questioning. At this point we started thinking that the local water park might have something to do with it. We visited about 5 days prior to everyone feeling sick. Our wheels started to turn: ‘maybe it wasn’t our pool’ In fact, we started thinking, another group of kids (our EP camp) had swam in our pool the same day we were at the waterpark, and no one in that other group was sick. Anyway, all of this information got sent to the CDC and 3 months later…
Report (End of COCUSA story) – The story basically came to an end here. We got a copy of the official report. Brief run down. And again, I was surprised by the professionalism. Camp of Champions USA was not called about by name, instead it just said: a private day camp. This really helped me feel better. They weren’t trying to give us a black eye, they were actually trying to help us. In the end though, the results were inconclusive. Our pool water did not test positive for crypto (although our chemicals were not at the adequate levels at the time of testing), and the waterpark’s water tested positive for a different intestinal parasite, but not the one that our campers had.
Next Spring – In the spring, we will be cleaning up the crypto-chaos in several ways. We will be draining and refilling our pool (which I highly recommend anyway). We will be power washing the pool between those steps. Also, the sand in our filter will be getting replaced. We sent a letter to parents, detailing the findings of the CDC report and our new preventive measures.
Prevention –Let me pause here to tell you why I chose to do a seminar on this topic. I want to help you prevent what happened at Camp of Champions. It was the worst I’ve felt in a LONG time. It was positively awful, and made even worse knowing that our campers and staff were also in the same pain. Please, please take preventive measures. I never want this to happen again at my camp, and I never want it to happen to any of you either. As with most things like this, prevention is key. There are more waterborne illnesses out there than crypto (e coli, giardia) And prevention for all of them is the same.
Cleanliness – General good hygiene is key. Washing hands. Preparing food properly. Obviously you’re already doing these, but remember their importance.
Sick Campers – If you even have a hint that a camper (or staff) has or has had diarrhea, do not let them swim! A person can pass on crypto up to 2 weeks after they recover. I know this is hard to regulate, and seems mean to enforce. But I would trade one upset camper for 30 sick campers anyday.
Shower! – I know at all public pools you are ‘supposed to shower’, and I also know that it hardly ever happens. We are going to take steps in the right direction this year with an outdoor shower. It will be small and unheated, but it is important that the dirt, sweat, (and maybe disease) on our campers is being washed off before they swim. (Another benefit there is lowered chemical consumption.)
New COCUSA policies – Here is a copy of the policies we are instituting this year. Most of them are already official because they are in the swimming pool and beach code. But it helps to have them down on paper. We wanted to show our returning parents what we had done about the problem. Also, should something happen, you will be asked what policies you had.
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