New York’s day and overnight summer camps may plan to reopen in June as the state’s COVID-19 cases continue to decrease, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced Wednesday.
The specific date of reopening was unclear, and Cuomo said the state Department of Health will provide more details on guidance soon. While day camps were permitted to operate at limited capacity last summer, sleepaway camps were shuttered the entire season.
With reopening camps this year, Cuomo said there will likely be some kind of mandatory testing protocol in place to ensure safety and he hinted he could reverse course if COVID-19 rates start climbing again.
“We hope the current trajectory stays until June,” Cuomo said at a press briefing Wednesday, saying that he’s keeping “one eye on these variants of interest” with the emergence of the more contagious strains of COVID019. “No parent is going to send their child to a summer camp, unless there's a testing protocol, anyway,” he added.
One upstate sleepaway camp in the Catskills celebrated the news as the culmination of efforts by the state’s summer camps and government officials.
The news comes after “a collaborative effort from summer camps, Directors, the American Camp Association, and a newly established group within Sullivan County have spent the last few months working in collaboration with government officials to confirm that residential summer camp will happen in NYS,” said Camp Echo in a tweet posted Wednesday, adding that there are 130 days until the traditional Opening Day.
Last summer, a group of parents and the Association of Jewish Camp Operators sued Cuomo over his closure of sleepaway camps during the coronavirus pandemic, arguing the governor’s order violates their constitutional rights of the free exercise of religion and “the fundamental rights of parents to control the religious education and upbringing of their children.”
