Swine flu strikes Ontario camps

More than 225 children at three summer camps in the the Simcoe-Muskoka District have come down with H1N1 influenza, District Health officer reports.

Dr. Charles Gardner reports all of the cases are mild and none of the affected campers have required hospitalization. The camps have not been named, however, parents with children at the camps have been notified. There are no plans to close the camps. The campers who have flu represent almost 20 per cent of the children at the camps. Campers are preschool and secondary-school age. While some campers remain at camp, because they were from out of country or their parents were unavailable, most have been sent home. The ill campers who were not sent home have been quarantined in infirmaries or otherwise separated from other campers. "We have been in close working relations with those camps and on those sites, maintaining daily communications with them about their numbers of cases and making sure they are tracking them well and making sure that they are doing really good controls to bring the outbreaks to a close," Gardner said. Camp Ramah, in Utterson, near Bracebridge, has been affected. It is a Jewish education camp attended by more than 450 young people, many of them from the United States. A father of a child, who was infected with the virus, was told by camp officials about 100 campers had the bug. Camp Ramah has another camp in Georgia where there has also been an H1N1 outbreak. Officials from the camp have not yet commented. The camp sent a letter sent to parents last week, saying: "...all of the cases of illness have been mild or moderate, and campers are recovering within 2-3 days. Most of the campers from the Toronto area have been sent home to recover, while campers from more distant locations are being cared for by our outstanding medical staff. "After recovery, campers are remaining separated from the regular camp community for a few more days, following the guidelines of local health officials." Parents are advised to screen their children for symptoms of the flu before sending them to camp.