COVID-19 Safety Protocols

Parameters for Arrival:

• We need to consider and monitor stay-at-home orders for both host communities and our group’s communities, as well as keeping a pulse on if our communities think it’s safe for us to come, or are still inviting us. Some places (Navajo Nation, Leech Lake) are currently asking people not to visit their communities.
• Camps are recommending a health screening questionnaire and regular temperature checks. We’ll implement these in some fashion on our sites:
  • Should parents fill out the questionnaire pre-departure? Who monitors results? We’d need a developer to add this to the paperwork website.
  • Should Trip Leaders ask these questions? It seems logical, but a burden for Trip Leaders.
  • Thermometers are hard to find right now, need to start ordering 1-2 per site, or ask groups to bring some.
• What are the parameters of the questionnaire? What are the criteria for someone staying home from the trip? Need to get public health guidance on this one, American Camp Association & Camp Nurse have some forms & protocol.
• We’ll need to work with Trip Leaders to develop safety parameters for their trip to site – IE what happens if someone starts feeling sick? Should they avoid large gatherings like amusement parks (if they’re even open)? Do we need to be concerned about van spacing? Groups will need hand sanitizer for vans, which is hard to find.
• Same guidelines for summer staff arrival!
  • High impact potential: If a summer staff had a sore throat 10 days before the summer, how do we navigate that? Do they get a COVID test (if even available)? Do we have to cancel their employment?
  • Most orgs are providing PPE for their staff – we’d need to procure 650-910 reusable masks if we’re doing 5-7 per staff (1 per day).

Site Safety & Cleanliness:

• Must find housing where other groups aren’t sharing the space – must re-clean the building after church, AA groups, Bible studies, etc.
• We’re estimating each site needing 1 gallon of hand sanitizer per week – which is near impossible to find currently. Need to search for this. Also, we can’t mail this to sites from our office (it’s flammable), so we’ll need to find a way to distribute this.
  • Same issue with cleaning supplies. American Camp Association is recommending we double the amount of cleaning supplies that we normally purchase.
  • It’s still hard to find toilet paper, which we’ll need a significant amount of.
• Each crew will have 2 daily building cleanup assignments, after breakfast and after dinner.
• Handwashing – how often do we want to do this on site? Every few hours? What’s the recommendation?
• Do we need to enforce social distancing on site?
  • This would impact meals, The Gathering/Devotions, sleeping rooms, footwashing…
    • Camp Association recommends sleeping people head to toe, 30” apart (“sneeze on their toes, not on their nose”). We want to adopt this, which means we may need to reevaluate some of our housing options.
  • We’re planning on removing every other chair in the dining room.
  • How does this impact free time? Some states currently limit playing basketball, for example.
• Do we need to wear masks while in the building?
• Do we need indoor shoes and outdoor shoes?
• Shareables – things like pens, markers, bibles. We’ll need groups to bring their own of these and not have these out on site. We think we can still do YW mail though, folks would have to wait 24hrs after leaving the site before they can read them.
  • This impacts free time as well – can folks share cards, board games, frisbees, etc?
• Showers – many of our shower locations are closed this summer, we’ll need to get creative on this front.

Meals & Kitchen

• Shopping:
  • We’re anticipating supply chain issues. We’re planning on massive substitution suggestions, and we may have to limit the amount of meat dishes on site (or at least have to cut certain types). Typical brands that we buy aren’t guaranteed to be in stock.
  • Sam’s, Costco, Walmart and Target are limiting quantities to purchase. Since we buy 3-4 flatbeds of food per week, this could be a major issue.
  • Staff must wear masks and wash hands frequently while shopping, including getting gas. Unfortunately grocery delivery or ‘click and pull’ doesn’t seem to be an option.
• Restaurant associations are recommending we tape off zones in the kitchen, and people have to stay within their zone (6ft from others). We’ll run into issues with just one handwashing sink, oven mitts (can’t share these), must have one adult monitoring the stove/oven.
• Serving line – one crew has to serve, can’t share utensils. This works for dinner, harder for the lunch line and for the water coolers. Anytime we have ‘seconds,’ the crew would need to come back up, wash their hands, and re-serve seconds.
• Dishes – is it safer to air dry the dishes, or have everyone have their own set of dishes for the week & keep it in a backpack or something? Participants will need a new lunch bag each day.

Service & Evening Activities

• General considerations:
  • Anytime we’re out in the community, CDC recommends wearing masks. There may be leniency on this if we’re not interacting with the community members (weeding a community garden, picking up trash, etc.)
  • Everyone (including staff) must stay 6ft away from community members.
  • Church groups can’t mix in crews, crews can only be groups of 10 (as per community request). Summer staff can’t ride with crews.
• Service sites:
  • Must cut all service with elderly or people with health conditions.
  • Likely cut service with large groups of people (soup kitchens, etc).
  • Create a large bank of creative projects to serve the community during COVID – art projects, car or window washing, packing meals, virtual chats with seniors, etc.
• Work Projects
  • No indoor projects
  • No sharing gloves
  • Daily sanitize goggles & tools
  • Need alternate bathrooms, can’t go inside the homeowner’s house. Can still talk with them if 6ft apart.
• Evening Activities:
  • Many of our locations are closed currently
  • Any location with large crowds should be cut – including downtown scavenger hunts and church services.
  • Community cookouts don’t seem safe right now – is there an alternative?

Illness Response:

• If any participant gets sick with COVID-19 symptoms, they must leave promptly. We don’t have a way to safely quarantine participants or staff. However, we’ll have spaces for them to wait until they can be picked up or until we can pack their stuff (safely, somehow) to take them home.
  • If they were in contact with many people, does the whole group have to leave? Does the whole site have to go home?
  • How do we make sure that the participant feels cared for in the midst of this?

• How do we know they have COVID or not? Will testing be readily available at that point? What about the remote sites?
• If a staff member gets sick, we’d need to get them tested for COVID-19 – if this isn’t possible, this would be a huge issue.
  • If they are sick, can they go home? Presumably they can’t travel. The whole team would also be exposed, plus 2 weeks of YW groups.